Very few people can claim to have had a minor planet named after them, and few academics have published papers in the international science journal Nature 66 years apart! That is why it is no surprise that Professor Michael Feast’s significant contributions to South Africa’s strong positioning in astronomy have earned him the 2015 NRF Lifetime Achievement Award.
Feast obtained a PhD in physics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology (London University) in 1949. In 1952 he came to South Africa and joined the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria. He used the 1.9m reflector, at that time the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, to open up the southern sky to modern astrophysics. His work on the brightest stars in our neighbouring galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, was a crucial step in our understanding of stellar evolution, and even today scientific literature still refers to his early work, although it was published over 50 years ago. He has also made important contributions to our understanding of variable stars and their use in studies of the Milky Way and other galaxies.
More recently, he has been working with South African and international colleagues using data from the Hipparcos Satellite, the Hubble Space Telescope and various telescopes at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO, Sutherland), to provide better insights into the structure of our own galaxy and a new calibration of the general extragalactic distance scale. In his capacity as director of SAAO (1976-1992), he turned the facility into a research centre for both South African and international astronomers.
As he approached retirement from this position, he was strongly aware of the growing need for a large optical telescope to keep South African research competitive into the 21st century, and he laid the groundwork that eventually led to the construction of the Southern African Large Telescope (Salt), the largest single optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.
He has held a number of influential positions within the International Astronomical Union, the main international co-ordinating body, including vice-president of the union, president (Commission 29, Stellar Spectra), president (Commission 27, Variable Stars), chairman (Working Group on Magellanic Clouds) and member (Scientific Organising Committee, Commission 28, Galaxies).
Feast has received a number of honours and awards over the years, the most recent of which was the JFW Herschel Medal from the Royal Society of South Africa.
Other awards and fellowships include the Gill Medal from the Astronomical Society of South Africa, the De Beers Gold Medal from the South African Institute of Physics, and Fellowships of the Royal Society of South Africa, the South African Institute of Physics, and an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society (UK). He is also a founding member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa and an NRF A-rated researcher.
Feast has 499 published contributions listed in the SAO/NASA Astrophysical Data System, with 257 in international refereed journals. At present he is continuing to publish his work in some of the top academic journals in the world. In 1993 he became an editor of one of these, published by the Royal Astronomical Society, London. He was the first person outside the UK to hold this position and continues to deal with over 200 research papers a year submitted by astronomers from all over the world.
Feast’s research continues to be innovative and to produce unexpected results that question conventional wisdom.
A recent surprise was the discovery — using the Salt telescope — of young stars in the flared outer disc of our Milky Way Galaxy.