Leon Mestel
Encyclopedia
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
and astrophysicist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex
University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....
. His research interests are in the areas of star formation and structure, especially stellar magnetism and astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics
Magnetohydrodynamics
Magnetohydrodynamics is an academic discipline which studies the dynamics of electrically conducting fluids. Examples of such fluids include plasmas, liquid metals, and salt water or electrolytes...
. He has won both the Eddington Medal
Eddington Medal
The Eddington Medal, named after Sir Arthur Eddington, is awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society nominally once every two years for investigations of outstanding merit in theoretical astrophysics.- Recipients :* 1953 Georges Lemaître...
(1993) and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
-History:In the early years, more than one medal was often awarded in a year, but by 1833 only one medal was being awarded per year. This caused a problem when Neptune was discovered in 1846, because many felt an award should jointly be made to John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier...
(for Astronomy, 2002). Following his retirement, he has also written several obituaries and biographical articles on physicists and astrophysicists.
Early life and family
Leon Mestel was born on 5 August 1927 in MelbourneMelbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia. With his family, he emigrated to England at the age of three, where he lived in Forest Gate
Forest Gate
Forest Gate is a residential area in the London Borough of Newham, 7 miles northeast of Charing Cross. It is bordered by Manor Park to the east and and to the west lies Stratford town centre. The northern half of the busy Green Street runs through it.-History:...
, east London. He was the son of Rabbi Solomon Mestel and Rachel, née Brodetsky, sister of Selig Brodetsky
Selig Brodetsky
Selig Brodetsky was a British Professor of Mathematics, a member of the World Zionist Executive, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the second president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Background:Brodetsky was born in Olviopol , Ukraine, the second of 13 children...
. He was educated at West Ham Secondary School, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, where he obtained his BA in 1948 and his Ph.D in 1952.
He married Sylvia Louise Cole in 1951, and they have two sons and two daughters. One of his sons is Jonathan Mestel
Jonathan Mestel
Andrew Jonathan Mestel is Professor of applied mathematics at Imperial College London who works on magnetohydrodynamics and biological fluid dynamics...
(born 1957), a mathematics professor and chess grandmaster. In 1982, as part of a memorial series of annual lectures at the University of Leeds commemorating his maternal uncle, Leon Mestel gave the 23rd Selig Brodetsky Memorial Lecture, titled Astronomy: A Mirror to Physics.
Research career
Mestel's research interests are in the area of astrophysicsAstrophysics
Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior...
, including: stellar structure
Stellar structure
Stars of different mass and age have varying internal structures. Stellar structure models describe the internal structure of a star in detail and make detailed predictions about the luminosity, the color and the future evolution of the star....
, stellar evolution
Stellar evolution
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star undergoes a sequence of radical changes during its lifetime. Depending on the mass of the star, this lifetime ranges from only a few million years to trillions of years .Stellar evolution is not studied by observing the life of a single...
, star formation
Star formation
Star formation is the process by which dense parts of molecular clouds collapse into a ball of plasma to form a star. As a branch of astronomy star formation includes the study of the interstellar medium and giant molecular clouds as precursors to the star formation process and the study of young...
, cosmic magnetism and pulsar
Pulsar
A pulsar is a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. The radiation can only be observed when the beam of emission is pointing towards the Earth. This is called the lighthouse effect and gives rise to the pulsed nature that gives pulsars their name...
electrodynamics.
At the time he was completing his Ph.D, Mestel took a position as an ICI
Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries was a British chemical company, taken over by AkzoNobel, a Dutch conglomerate, one of the largest chemical producers in the world. In its heyday, ICI was the largest manufacturing company in the British Empire, and commonly regarded as a "bellwether of the British...
Research Fellow at the Department of Mathematics in the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
, carrying out research here in the three-year period from 1951 to 1954. Also during this period, in 1952, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS). Mestel then spent the academic year of 1954-5 as a Commonwealth Fund
Commonwealth Fund
The Commonwealth Fund is a private U.S. foundation whose stated purpose is to promote a high-performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, especially for society's most vulnerable.-History:...
Fellow at the Observatory at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
.
Returning to England, he was a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
for eleven years from 1955 to 1966, first as an assistant lecturer (1955–1958) and then as a full lecturer (1958–1966). While at Cambridge, he was a Fellow of St John's College
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
from 1957 to 1966. This time at Cambridge included a period as a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in Princeton, New Jersey, during the academic year of 1961-2.
In 1963, he published a paper describing a phenomenon that occurs during galaxy and star formation that came to be known as a 'Mestel disk'.
Mestel left Cambridge in 1966 after being appointed to the position of professor at the University of Manchester
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...
, but before taking up his appointment there he spent the academic year of 1966-7 as JFK Fellow at the Weizmann Institute, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Returning to England, he spent six years as professor of applied mathematics in Manchester (1967–1973). The fourth and final stage of his career was as professor of astronomy at the University of Sussex
University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....
, a position he took up in 1973 and held for nineteen years.
Mestel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
(FRS) in 1977. He retired in 1992, becoming Emeritus Professor at Sussex.
Awards and honours
- 1993 - Eddington MedalEddington MedalThe Eddington Medal, named after Sir Arthur Eddington, is awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society nominally once every two years for investigations of outstanding merit in theoretical astrophysics.- Recipients :* 1953 Georges Lemaître...
for "his fundamental work on cosmic magnetism" - 2002 - Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical SocietyGold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society-History:In the early years, more than one medal was often awarded in a year, but by 1833 only one medal was being awarded per year. This caused a problem when Neptune was discovered in 1846, because many felt an award should jointly be made to John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier...
(for Astronomy, 2002).
Later years
Since retiring, Mestel has written several obituaries and biographical articles on physicists and astrophysicists for publications such as The IndependentThe Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society
The Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society is an academic journal published annually by the Royal Society. It publishes obituaries of Fellows of the Royal Society...
. Those for whom Mestel has written obituaries and articles include Martin Schwarzschild
Martin Schwarzschild
Martin Schwarzschild was a German American astronomer. He was the son of famed astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild and the nephew of the Swiss astrophysicist Robert Emden.-Biography:...
, Roger John Tayler, William McCrea
William McCrea (astronomer)
Sir William Hunter McCrea FRS was an English astronomer and mathematician.-Biography:His family moved to Kent in 1906 and then Derbyshire where he attended Chesterfield Grammar School. His father was a school master at Netherthorpe Grammar School in Staveley...
, Hermann Bondi
Hermann Bondi
Sir Hermann Bondi, KCB, FRS was an Anglo-Austrian mathematician and cosmologist. He is best known for developing the steady-state theory of the universe with Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold as an alternative to the Big Bang theory, but his most lasting legacy will probably be his important...
, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, FRS ) was an Indian origin American astrophysicist who, with William A. Fowler, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for key discoveries that led to the currently accepted theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars...
, and Thomas George Cowling
Thomas George Cowling
Thomas George Cowling FRS was an English astronomer.Cowling was born in Hackney, London and studied mathematics at Brasenose College, Oxford from 1924 to 1930. From 1928 to 1930 he worked under Edward Arthur Milne...
. Mestel also contributed the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Selig Brodetsky.
In 2002, Mestel was an invited speaker at a conference held in Cardiff, Wales, in memory of Fred Hoyle
Fred Hoyle
Sir Fred Hoyle FRS was an English astronomer and mathematician noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally...
. In 2004, together with John D. Barrow
John D. Barrow
-External links:****** The Forum-Publications available on the Internet:************...
, Mestel organised a Commemoration Meeting at the Royal Astronomical Society to mark 60 years since the death of Arthur Eddington, publishing a paper on Eddington later the same year. In 2009, Mestel featured in Portraits of Astronomers, a book by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies with portraits of thirty-eight leading UK astronomers. As of 2009, Mestel resides in Cambridge.
External links
- Leon Mestel, International Astronomical Union
- Leon Mestel, University of Sussex