Dear Colleagues:

It is my sad duty to tell you that our colleague and friend Brian 
Marsden passed away today, Thursday, November 18th.

Brian was a major figure in our field and internationally recognized for
his work in celestial mechanics and astrometry. His career was marked 
with distinction for his long and tireless service as the director of 
both the Minor Planet Center and the Central Bureau of Astronomical 
Telegrams.  In those positions, Brian directed the collection, 
processing and confirmation of orbital calculations for hundreds of 
thousands of objects.  His work with the amateur astronomy community 
created a channel for discoveries that contributed significantly to the 
accuracy of those orbital databases.

Brian was also instrumental in bringing the general public to an 
awareness of near Earth objects and potentially hazardous asteroids 
through his many connections with the international science press.  Not 
without controversy, Brian was a major architect of the IAU's eventual 
reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006.

Born in Cambridge, England, Brian received his B.A. (1959) and M.A. 
(1963) from Oxford University, and received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1966,
having written his dissertation on the orbits of the Galilean satellites
of Jupiter.  He joined SAO in 1965 as a Smithsonian scientist, at the 
invitation of Fred Whipple.  In 1968, he was named director of the 
Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) and assumed the 
directorship of the Minor Planet Center in 1978.  He became director 
emeritus of CBAT in 2000 and of the MPC in 2006.  He served as Associate
Director of the Planetary Sciences Division from 1987 to 2002.

Brian served as Chairman of the AAS Division on Dynamical Astronomy from
1976 - 1978 and president of the IAU Commission on the Positions and 
Motions of Minor Planets, Comets and Satellites from 1976-1979.  From 
1994 to 2000, he was the Vice President of IAU Commission 6 and was a 
board member of the Spaceguard Foundation from 1996-2002.


In 1995 he received the Dirk Brouwer Award (named for his mentor at 
Yale) of the AAS Division on Dynamical Astronomy and the 1989 Van 
Biesbroeck Award from the University of Arizona. He was awarded the 
Royal Society Award for Service to Astronomy and Geophysics in 2006.

With best regards,

Charles Alcock
Director, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics