Leonard Mandel (1927–2001)

Leonard Mandel was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany. His parents were Rosa and Naftali (Robert) Mandel, a businessman who had emigrated from Poland. Leonard excelled in school, despite the violent anti-Semitism he began to experience as a child with the rise of the Nazi regime. With the help of a maternal aunt, who was already in England, he and his parents fled to London, leaving most of their belongings behind. Leonard lived for a while in a hostel with other Jewish refugee children, then moved with his parents to Llangollen in North Wales. It was here that he had his first lessons in physics lessons, and knew right away that he wanted physics to be part of his life. The family returned to London, only to be greeted by the Blitz attacks of World War II, and spent their nights sleeping on a platform in the Underground. Leonard attended the William Ellis School, where he became head boy. After graduating, he enrolled at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he took classes in the evening and worked during the day to support himself. He earned a BSc degree in mathematics and physics in 1947 and a PhD degree in nuclear physics in 1951. In 1955, he became a senior lecturer at Imperial College London, University of London, where he met his future wife Jeanne. The couple married in 1953 and had two children. In1964, Mandel was recruited by the University of Rochester, New York, as a professor of physics. He later was appointed Lee DuBridge Professor of Physics and Optics. Prof. Mandel is credited with being one of the founders of the field of quantum optics, the merging of quantum mechanics and optics in the 1960s that became one of the most exciting areas in modern science. He published more than 260 scholarly papers in science journals. Together with his colleague Emil Wolf, he organized a series of highly influential international conferences, known as the Rochester Conferences on Coherence and Quantum Optics, and co-authored Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics (1995), an instant classic. Prof. Mandel served on the Board of Directors of the Optical Society of America in 1985-1988, and was Associate Editor of the Journal of the Optical Society in 1970-1976 and 1982-1983. In addition to his pioneering research, Mandel was known as an exceptional teacher, and received the 1992 Faculty Graduate Teaching Award by the University of Rochester.