Leonard Mandel

Who was Leonard Mandel?

Leonard Mandel was the Lee DuBridge Professor Emeritus of Physics and Optics at the University of Rochester when he died at the age of 73 at his home in Pittsford, New York. He contributed immensely to theoretical and experimental optics. With Emil Wolf he published the highly regarded book Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics.

Mandel was born in Berlin, Germany, where his father had emigrated from Eastern Europe. He received a BSc degree in mathematics and physics in 1947 and a PhD degree in nuclear physics in 1951 from Birkbeck College, University of London, in the United Kingdom. He became a technical officer at Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd in Welwyn, UK, in 1951. In 1955, he became a lecturer and, later, senior lecturer at Imperial College London, University of London. He remained at Imperial until 1964, when he joined the University of Rochester as a professor of physics.