Neal Hulkower
Why did you choose Northwestern?
I did my undergraduate work in Astronomy at NU and met Don Saari when I asked if I could enroll in his Celestial Mechanics seminar during my senior year. I was impressed by his approach and after an unhappy year as an Astronomy graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, I worked my way back to Northwestern and became Don's student.
How would you describe your research and/or work to a non-academic audience? What was it then and/or what it is now?
My dissertation focused on the behavior of 3 bodies under their mutual gravitational influence. The three-body problem was first posed by Newton as an abstraction of the problem of determining the position and velocity of the moon at any time under the influence of both the sun and the earth. I refined the classification of motion for the general three-body problem as time goes to infinity when the total energy (the sum of kinetic and potential energies) of the system is zero. Of particular interest are the solutions that approach central configurations. For 3 bodies, these are either a straight line or an equilateral triangle. These have applications in astronomy and space exploration.
Tell us who or what inspired your research and/or work.
Don Saari remains my mentor. Most recently, I have been applying his work in decision analysis to a number of other areas including voting, engineering trade studies, and wine competitions.
What are you most proud of in your career to date?
My dissertation, my work on missions to near-Earth asteroids when I worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, my acquisition and leadership of studies of mobile satellite communications when I was at the MITRE Corporation.
Tell us about a current achievement or something you're working on that excites you.
Lately, I enjoy applying mathematics to issues in the wine industry. I am a member of the American Association of Wine Economists and give presentations on various topics, usually involving math, at the annual meetings.
What advice would you give your younger self or someone considering a similar path?
Know that a degree in mathematics, especially applied mathematics, is like holding a career wild card: you can get involved with almost any other discipline if you are willing to take some time to learn its particulars. You will only be limited by your imagination and willingness to try something different.