Curt Michel

Frank Curtis Michel (June 5, 1934 – February 26, 2015) was an American astrophysicist; a professor of astrophysics at Rice University in Houston, Texas; a United States Air Force pilot; and a NASA astronaut.

Personal life Michel was born June 5, 1934, to parents to Frank and Viola Michel. He was married to Bonnie Hausman, a web technical specialist. He had two children, Alice and Jeff with his first wife Beverly, who preceded him in death, and three grandchildren. Michel died at the age of 80 on February 26, 2015. He was buried with full military honors at the Houston National Cemetery.

Education Michel graduated from C. K. McClatchy High School, located at Sacramento, California, in 1951. In 1955, he received a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in physics, and in 1962 he received a doctorate in physics, both from the California Institute of Technology.

While on the faculty of Rice University, Michel oversaw the dissertations of Jerry Modisette, Robert LaQuey, Robert Manka, Cliff Morris, Michael Pelizzari, Jürgen Krause-Polstorff, James Sokolowski, and Steven Sturner.

Organizations Michel was a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the American Geophysical Union, and the American Astronomical Society. such as the interaction of solar winds and the lunar atmosphere. He resigned from NASA on August 18, 1969 without having been assigned to any spaceflight missions. Michel believed that it was his decision to resign (after it became clear that he would not be given a flight assignment) that motivated the scientific community to demand that his fellow scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt be reassigned to Apollo 17 (replacing Joe Engle) after Schmitt's planned mission on Apollo 18 was cancelled.

After his resignation from NASA, Michel returned to teaching and research at Rice, where he also served as chair of the space physics and astronomy department from 1974 to 1979.

Research Michel's research spanned many disciplines. In 1964, he predicted the existence of spin "optical rotation" due to parity nonconserving weak interactions. This phenomenon was experimentally confirmed in 1980 and is used to study parity nonconserving weak interactions between neutrons and nuclei. Michel is best known for his work on pulsars and neutron star magnetospheres Michel is the author of the book Handbook of High-Energy Astrophysics Experiments, Springer Verlag, 2015 . Michel was a contributor to the book NASA's Scientist-Astronauts by David Shayler and Colin Burgess, Springer Praxis, 2007