Leon Mestel

Leon Mestel was a male astronomer, astrophysicist, mathematician, and university teacher born in Melbourne in 1927. He held citizenship in the United Kingdom and Australia. His professional career included teaching positions at the University of Sussex, the University of Manchester, the University of Cambridge, and Leiden University. He was educated at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

Mestel’s fields of work included astronomy, astrophysics, and magnetohydrodynamics. He was a doctoral student of Thomas George Cowling and had Fred Hoyle as his doctoral advisor. His doctoral students included Donald Lynden-Bell, Shashikumar Chitre, Teresa Lago, and Ken Freeman. He was a member of the Royal Society and received the Eddington Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the title of Fellow of the Royal Society. He died in Cambridge in 2017.