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.[1] His hobbies were photography, tennis, handball, and baseball.[2] Michel died at the age of 80 on February 26, 2015.[1] He was buried with full military honors at the Houston National Cemetery.[3]
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.[5]
Michel was selected as a scientist-astronaut in NASA Astronaut Group 4 in June 1965.[8] He resigned from NASA on August 18, 1969[9] 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)[10] after Schmitt's planned mission on Apollo 18 was cancelled.[11]
Michel's research spanned many disciplines. In 1964, he predicted the existence of spin "optical rotation" due to parity nonconserving weak interactions.[12] This phenomenon was experimentally confirmed in 1980 and is used to study parity nonconserving weak interactions between neutrons and nuclei.[13] Michel is best known for his work on pulsars and neutron star magnetospheres[14] but his work also included solar wind interactions with the Moon and other bodies, extending to the heliopause. In 2000, Michel officially retired from Rice but he continued to be active in research until his death in 2015.[5]
Books
Michel is the author of the book Theory of Neutron Star Magnetospheres, University of Chicago Press, 1990 ISBN9780226523316.[14]
Michel is the author of the book Handbook of High-Energy Astrophysics Experiments, Springer Verlag, 2015 ISBN9781441965288 .
Michel was a contributor to the book NASA's Scientist-Astronauts by David Shayler and Colin Burgess, Springer Praxis, 2007 ISBN9780387218977
^Williams, Mike (July 17, 2009). "From astrophysicist to astronaut — and back". Rice University News & Media. Archived from the original on July 18, 2021. Retrieved June 10, 2021. Michel contends that if he had not resigned when he did, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt — the only one in Michel's astronaut class to walk on the moon — might never have done so. "Jack wasn't even on the agenda," he said. "Another guy was scheduled (for Apollo 17), but the National Academy of Sciences got all pushed out of shape when I left. I think that was largely influential in Jack getting his flight. When it looked like their primary idea of getting a scientist to the moon was going to flop, they finally started pushing their weight around."
^Forte, M. (August 1980). "Parity violation effects in neutron scattering and capture". Lettere al Nuovo Cimento. 28 (16): 538–540. doi:10.1007/BF02772925. S2CID123277597.
