Leon Mestel (5 August 1927 – 15 September 2017) was a British-Australian astronomer and astrophysicist and emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex. His research interests were in the areas of star formation and structure, especially stellar magnetism and astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics. He was awarded both the Eddington Medal (1993) and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (for Astronomy, 2002). Following his retirement, he wrote several obituaries and biographical articles on physicists and astrophysicists.
Early life and family Leon Mestel was born on 5 August 1927MESTEL, Prof. Leon, Who's Who 2010, A & C Black, 2010; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2009; online edn, Nov 2009. Retrieved 7 November 2010 in Melbourne, AustraliaProf Leon Mestel, FRS , Debrett's People of Today. Retrieved 7 November 2010 to Solomon Mestel, a rabbi and Rachel (née Brodetsky), a schoolteacher and sister of Selig Brodetsky. With his family, he migrated to England at the age of three, where he lived in Forest Gate, east London. He was educated at West Ham Secondary School, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained his BA in 1948 and his PhD in 1952.
He married Sylvia Louise Cole (d. 2014) in 1951, and they had two sons, Ben and Jonathan and two daughters Rosie and Leo. One of his sons is Jonathan Mestel (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.Astronomy: A Mirror to Physics, University of Leeds Review, 1982 (entry at worldcat.org)
Research career Mestel's research interests were in the area of astrophysics, including: stellar structure, stellar evolution, star formation, cosmic magnetism and pulsar electrodynamics.
At the time he was completing his PhD, Mestel took a position as an ICI Research Fellow at the Department of Mathematics in the University of Leeds, carrying out research there 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 Fellow at the Observatory at Princeton University.
Returning to England, he was a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Cambridge 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 from 1957 to 1966. This time at Cambridge included a period as a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study 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'.On the galactic law of rotation, Leon Mestel, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 126, p.553, 1963
Mestel left Cambridge in 1966 after being appointed to the position of professor at the University of Manchester, but before taking up his appointment there he spent the academic year of 1966–7 as JFK Fellow at the Weizmann Institute, Israel. 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, a position he took up in 1973 and held for nineteen years.The Early History of the Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex. Retrieved 6 November 2010
Mestel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1977. He retired in 1992, becoming Emeritus Professor at Sussex.Leon Mestel , Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sussex. Retrieved 6 November 2010
Awards and honours 1993 – Eddington Medal for "his fundamental work on cosmic magnetism"Citation for the award of the Eddington Medal to Professor Leon Mestel, QJRAS (1993), volume 34, pages 275–276 2002 – Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (for Astronomy, 2002).Winners of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society , Royal Astronomical Society. Retrieved 6 November 20102002 February meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society (announcement of the award), The Observatory, Vol. 122, p. 194-199, 20022002 April meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society (presentation of the award), The Observatory, Vol. 122, p. 242-246, 2002
Later years After retiring, Mestel wrote several obituaries and biographical articles on physicists and astrophysicists for publications such as The Independent, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. Those for whom Mestel wrote obituaries and articles include Martin Schwarzschild,Obituary: Professor Martin Schwarzschild, Leon Mestel, The Independent, Saturday, 19 April 1997 Roger John Tayler,Obituary: Professor Roger Tayler, Leon Mestel, The Independent, Tuesday, 28 January 1997Leon Mestel, Tayler, Roger John (1929–1997), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 7 November 2010 William McCrea,Leon Mestel, McCrea, Sir William Hunter (1904–1999), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, Oct 2007. Retrieved 7 November 2010 Hermann Bondi, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar,Leon Mestel, Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1910–1995), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 7 November 2010Obituary: Professor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Leon Mestel, The Independent, Thursday, 24 August 1995 and Thomas George Cowling.Leon Mestel, Cowling, Thomas George (1906–1990), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 7 November 2010 Mestel also contributed the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Selig Brodetsky.Leon Mestel, Brodetsky, Selig (1888–1954), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 7 November 2010
In 2002, Mestel was an invited speaker at a conference held in Cardiff, Wales, in memory of Fred Hoyle.Fred Hoyle Memorial Conference , Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology. Retrieved 7 November 2010 In 2004, together with John D. Barrow, 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.Arthur Stanley Eddington: pioneer of stellar structure theory, Leon Mestel, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage: Volume 7, Number 2, December 2004, pp.65–73 In 2009, Mestel featured in Portraits of Astronomers, a book by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies with portraits of thirty-eight leading UK astronomers.Portraits of Astronomers, website of Lucinda Douglas-Menzies. Retrieved 6 November 2010This 2008 photograph of Mestel is also available from the AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives: see Mestel Leon A1 (4 April 2008). In 2008, he moved back to his family in Cambridge, where he died in September 2017.
Bibliography 'Why Does the Sun Shine?', essay in The Emerging Universe (1972) Stellar Magnetism (1999), leading monograph on the subject Stellar Magnetism (2003), later edition of the earlier work 'Stellar Rotation: A Historical Survey', chapter in Stellar Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics (2003) 'Astrophysical MHD – The Early Years', chapter in Magnetohydrodynamics (2007)
References
External links Leon Mestel (International Astronomical Union) Leon Mestel (University of Sussex) Leon Mestel in 1973 (Emilio Segrè Visual Archives of the American Institute of Physics) Leon Mestel in 1976 (Emilio Segrè Visual Archives of the American Institute of Physics)