Paolo Farinella

Paolo Farinella (13 January 1953 – 25 March 2000) was an Italian scientist active in the field of planetary science and in particular in the study of asteroids and other small bodies of the Solar System.

Biography Paolo Farinella was born on 13 January 1953 in Migliarino, close to Ferrara in Italy. He received his degree in 1975 at the University and the "Scuola Normale Superiore" of Pisa. After that he became a graduate student of Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo and worked as a research astronomer at the Observatory of Brera. The Paolo Farinella Prize was proposed at this workshop and later was awarded annually from 2011 to 2024, followed by the Europlanet Mid-Career Medal awarded in his memory since 2025.

In July 2015, after the New Horizons fly-by with Pluto, the New Horizons team gave the provisional name "Farinella" to a crater on Pluto, north of the Tombaugh Regio. The name was approved by IAU in 2024.

Asteroid 3248 Farinella is named after him.

One of the CubeSats flying on ESA's Ramses mission was named Farinella after him in 2026.

Notable works Farinella, Paolo; Gonczi, R.; Froeschlé, Christiane; Froeschlé, Claude; "The injection of Asteroid Fragments into Resonances", Icarus n. 101, 174-187 (1993) Vokrouhlicky, D.; Farinella, Paolo; Mignard, F.; "Solar radiation pressure perturbations for earth satellites", Astronomy and Astrophysics 285, 333-343 (1994) Farinella, Paolo; Froeschlé, Christiane; Froeschlé, Claude; Gonczi, R.; Hahn, G.; Morbidelli, Alessandro; Valsecchi, G.; "Asteroids falling into the Sun", Nature Vol. 371, 22 September 1994 Farinella, Paolo; Vokrouhlicky, D.; Barlier, F.; "The rotation of LAGEOS and its long-term semimajor axis decay: A self-consistent solution", Journal of Geophysical Research Vol 101, NO. B8, pages 17,861-17,872, August 10, 1996