1. Frank Curtis "Curt" Michel was an American astrophysicist; a professor of astrophysics at Rice University in Houston, Texas; a United States Air Force pilot; and a NASA astronaut.
16 Facts About Curt Michel
1. 2.
Curt Michel was married to Bonnie Hausman, a web technical specialist.
3.
Curt Michel had two children, Alice and Jeff with his first wife Beverly, who preceded him in death, and three grandchildren.
4.
Curt Michel was buried with full military honors at the Houston National Cemetery.
5.
Curt Michel's thesis was "Beta Spectra of the Mass 12 Nuclei" and his dissertation advisor was Thomas Lauritsen.
6.
Curt Michel was a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the American Geophysical Union, and the American Astronomical Society.
7.
Curt Michel was a junior engineer with the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company's guided missile division before joining the Air Force in 1955.
8.
Curt Michel accumulated 1,000 hours flying time with 900 hours in jet aircraft.
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Curt Michel joined the faculty of Rice University in Houston, Texas in July 1963.
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Curt Michel was selected as a scientist-astronaut in NASA Astronaut Group 4 in June 1965.
11.
Curt Michel resigned from NASA on August 18,1969 without having been assigned to any spaceflight missions.
12.
Curt Michel believed that it was his decision to resign that motivated the scientific community to demand that his fellow scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt be reassigned to Apollo 17 after Schmitt's planned mission on Apollo 18 was cancelled.
13.
Curt Michel was the Andrew Hays Buchanan Professor of Astrophysics from 1974 until his retirement in 2000.
14.
Curt Michel was named a Guggenheim Fellow to the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, from 1979 to 1980, and was awarded a Humboldt Prize to study in Heidelberg at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, in West Germany, from 1983 to 1984.
15.
Curt Michel is best known for his work on pulsars and neutron star magnetospheres but his work included solar wind interactions with the Moon and other bodies, extending to the heliopause.
16.
In 2000, Curt Michel officially retired from Rice but he continued to be active in research until his death in 2015.