Nico Marquardt

Nico Marquardt
Member of the Parliament Potsdam
Assumed office
25 May 2014
Personal details
Born (1994-05-24) 24 May 1994
Potsdam, Germany
Political party  German:
Social Democratic Party of Germany
Signature
Website Official website

Nico Marquardt (born May 24, 1994 in Potsdam) is a German politician, non-executive director and consultant.[1] He became internationally known with his research work “The Killer Asteroid 99942 Apophis”.

Life

Nico Marquardt was born in Potsdam, Germany as the son of Oberstleutnant Harald Broh and nurse Apolonia Marquardt and attended the Humboldt High School in Potsdam.[2]

In April 2008, at the age of 13, he took part in the competition Jugend forscht with his research paper „The Killer Asteroid 99942 Apophis“, in which he calculated the probability for the asteroid Apophis to collide with a geosynchronous satellite and the consequences of this event to the likelihood of an Earth-collision. On the day of the award Marquardt was interviewed by the biggest German newspaper Bild which published an article stating a 100-times higher probability of an Earth-collision in the year 2036 than Marquardt calculated.[3] Afterwards, nearly all international press reported the news with false data caused by the review from Bild even though Marquardt denied.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Marquardt used this global attention and ever since became one of the globally most influential Twitter-users in the category science.[11]

Since January 2013 Marquardt acts as the Global Advisor for Social Media at Mars One and CEO of the consultant firm Rabbit.[12] As of August 2014 Marquardt has been elected as non-executive director of the energy-company EWP.[13]

Political career

During his final year in High School Marquardt ran for office in Potsdam as a candidate for the Social Democratic Party of Germany and won the local elections with the fourth-best result of his party. This way Marquardt is the youngest elected politician of all state capitals in Germany.[14] In November 2015 Marquardt filed criminal charges against the far-right political party "Der Dritte Weg" (German for "The Third Way") in Germany because of incitement to hatred.[15][16]

Awards

Marquardt won the first price at the German competition Jugend forscht, got the Special Honor from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Special Award of the German Aerospace Center.[17]

Other

The astronomer Fred Watson about Marquardt: "Marquardt has done a marvellous job. A hundred years ago people used logarithms and hand-calculators and slide rules to work out asteroid orbits. But it says a lot for the world that we live in that a 13 year-old schoolboy can download the right software to do the job and actually find errors in Nasa's work. It is quite extraordinary."[18]

References

  1. ↑ "Website of the Social Democratic Party". Retrieved 2015-10-27.
  2. ↑ Biography of Nico Marquardt (retrieved 27. October 2015)
  3. ↑ "„Ich habe den Weltuntergang ausgerechnet“". Bild. Retrieved 2015-03-27.
  4. ↑ "NASA refutes story of boy who predicted asteroid collision". Radio-Canada. 16 April 2008. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  5. ↑ "Ragazzino calcola la fine del mondo". Corriere della Sera. 17 April 2008. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  6. ↑ "Niño alemán corrige cálculos a la NASA". CNN. 16 April 2008. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  7. ↑ "13-year-old corrects NASA's asteroid figures". China Daily. 16 April 2008. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  8. ↑ "Un petit génie allemand met la NASA en échec". RTL (French radio). 16 April 2008. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  9. ↑ "NASA says German whiz-kid got it wrong". ABC. 17 April 2008. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  10. ↑ "Schoolboy corrects NASA 'killer asteroid' maths'". The Age. 16 April 2008. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  11. ↑ Nico Marquardt on Twitter (retrieved 27. October 2015)
  12. ↑ Global Advisor Social Media Mars One (retrieved 27. October 2015)
  13. ↑ Non-executive director energy company EWP (retrieved 27. October 2015)
  14. ↑ Nico Marquardt ist jüngster Stadtverordneter, at PNN, 28. Mai 2015 (retrieved 27. October 2015)
  15. ↑ "SPD-Stadtverordneter aus Potsdam zeigt rechtsextremem Parteivorsitzenden an". Blickpunkt. 5 November 2015. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  16. ↑ "SPD-Mann zeigt Neonazis an". MAZ. 5 November 2015. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  17. ↑ Jugend forscht: Sonderpreis für Nico Marquardt, at PNN, 8. April 2008 (retrieved 27. October 2015)
  18. ↑ "Prof. Fred Watson about Marquardt". itNews. 17 April 2008. Retrieved 8 November 2015.

External links

Reports about Nico Marquardt

External links

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