Biography of Alain Maury :
Alain Maury is an engineer with a formation in photography. He started working at the observatoire de la Côte d'Azur Schmidt telescope in his native France, where he discovered his first Near Earth Object in 1983 (1983TF2, later identified with a previously discovered object, and later named Ptah). From 1984-1988 he worked as a photographic scientist at Palomar Observatory in California (second Palomar Sky Survey). With a growing interest in the discovery of asteroids and comets, he went back to France at the OCA Schmidt telescope from 1989 to 1999. He was a member of NASA 1992 Spaceguard committee. He was one of the persons at the origin of the OCA DLR Asteroid Survey program which from 1997 to 1999 discovered several hundred asteroids. He is the discoverer of 3 comets. Asteroid 3780 bears his name. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union, and is a consultant to the IAU working group on Near Earth Objects. No funding being available for asteroid searches in France, he took a position in Chile in 2000, at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla as a survey engineer for the DeNIS infrared sky survey, then the EROS2 microgravitational lens search program. In 2003, Alain Maury left his job at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in order to found SPACE with his spouse in San Pedro de Atacama. SPACE is a mean to show the sky to the numerous tourists which visit the Atacama desert, and also a manner to be independant and self financed to search asteroids and comets from the clear southern skies.
Always interested in astronomy popularisation, Mr Maury has given many conferences and written many articles in astronomy magazines. He has also been active in the amateur astronomy field in France, being among other the creator and moderator of the AUDE internet astronomy list. He has built several telescopes, has organized several public observations, and has participated to several television programs. He is the recipient of the Société Astronomique de France "Prix du centenaire" and of the 1997 Prix Julien Saget.