Duncan Steel

Dr Duncan I. Steel, BSc, MSc, DIC, PhD, FRAS (born 11 June 1955), is a British/Australian scientist born in Midsomer Norton, Somerset. He is a world-renowned space science authority who has worked with NASA to assess the threat of comet and asteroid collisions and investigate technologies to avert such impacts. He was Associate Professor in space technology at the Joule Physics Laboratory, University of Salford (1999–2003). He is also the author of four popular-level science books on space, and regularly writes for The Guardian and various other newspapers and magazines. He was the discoverer of the main-belt asteroid 9767 Midsomer Norton, plus another eleven minor planets.

Duncan was born within a few yards of the back row of seats in the Palladium Cinema (in the High Street of Midsomer Norton), where his father Ken Steel (b. 1929) started as rewind boy and finally had to close the establishment, as the owner, 49 years later. His mother Shirley Steel (b. 1932) was brought up in Parsons Newsagency in The Island and is currently a local Councillor.

There are five children of the Steel family. The eldest is Professor Karen Steel (b.1953), a geneticist who was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009, works at the Sanger Centre near Cambridge, and is married to Dr Simon Teague (one child: Sam). Next is Duncan. Following him is Melinda Dowling (b. 1958) who runs the Headlines hairdressers in the High Street, whilst her husband Dale operates Steels' Caravans in Radstock Road (three children: Abbie, Hollie and Jayson). The youngest daughter is Dr Ashley Steel (b. 1959) who lives in London with her partner Angie, and is a Partner at KPMG. Russell Steel (b. 1964) lives on Silver Street and operates a paintball game business at Hunstrete; he is married to Lyn (four children: Chelsea, Oliver, Brandon and Jarrad).

Duncan was married, first, to Margareta Olsson of Helsingborg, Sweden (1982–88; no children) and, second, to Helen Pope of Adelaide (1991–2005; sons Harry and Elliot). For some years he went by the name Olsson-Steel.

Outside the world of space science, Duncan claims to have introduced the Sex Pistols at their first completed concert (28 November 1975) at Queen Elizabeth College, and also The 101'ers (featuring Joe Strummer later of The Clash).

Early life and career

Duncan was born and grew up in Midsomer Norton, Somerset,^[1] where he attended Norton Hill School^[2] (formerly Midsomer Norton Grammar School) from 1966-73. He was a member for many years of the 1st Midsomer Norton Scout Group. Amongst his various jobs were putting up the posters for the cinema, calling the bingo numbers, selling ice creams, delivering newspapers, and delivering bread for Smiths Bakeries (Wellow round). Before going up to college in London he worked in the family caravan business. At college he ran all the entertainments, including the bands, discos and films. In 1975 he travelled Europe by train and got as far south as Marrakech. In 1976 he worked on a summer camp in upstate New York. In 1977-78 he was a teacher (A-Level Physics) at a crammer college in central London. In 1978 he travelled around the US (40 states) and Canada by Greyhound bus, mostly with Ross Pratten (b.1955), son of Norman Pratten, Clerk of Norton-Radstock Council.

Later career

Duncan attended the University of London,^[3] studying as an undergraduate at Queen Elizabeth College (BSc in Physics and Astrophysics, 1977) and also University College, and as a graduate student at Queen Mary College (1977–78) and at the Imperial College of Science and Technology where he took an MSc and DIC (1978–79). From September 1979 to January 1982 he worked at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics of the University of Colorado at Boulder. For the following three years he was at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand building a radar for meteor studies, being awarded a PhD degree in 1985. Between 1985 and 1996 he was associated with the University of Adelaide, South Australia, undertaking research in radar meteors, and asteroid and comet dynamics. In 1987-88 he was a European Space Agency Research Fellow at Lunds Observatoriet, Sweden. From 1990-95 he also worked at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Coonabarabran, New South Wales, where he established and directed the only southern hemisphere program for the discovery and tracking of near-Earth asteroids. From 1988-99 he additionally ran his own companies, amongst them Spaceguard Australia P/L. In 1999-2003 he was at the University of Salford, UK. Since 2004 he has worked for Ball Aerospace Australia (now part of the QinetiQ Group) in Canberra, ACT. Duncan is also a Visiting Researcher at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at the University of NSW in Sydney.

He has been involved in investigations on small bodies in the solar system using optical telescopes, meteor radar systems, and theoretical techniques to investigate their dynamical evolution.^[4] Amongst his scientific achievements have been the identification of the first asteroid spinning so fast that it must be a monolith, the first identification of interstellar dust entering the atmosphere, and an influx of comet-derived meteoroids ablating high in the atmosphere that appear to be made of tarry organics. He is also interested in the astronomy and history of calendars, and the life of Charles Babbage amongst many other things.

Books published

• Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the Million Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth (Wiley, New York, 1995) (with a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke).
• Eclipse: The Celestial Phenomenon Which Changed the Course of History (Headline, London, 1999 & 2000)
• Target Earth (Time Life 2000; Readers Digest 2001) (with an afterword by Arthur C. Clarke)
• Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar (Wiley, New York, 2000).
• Eclipse: The Celestial Phenomenon That Changed the Course of History (National Academies Press, Washington DC, 2001)

Other achievements

• Duncan is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a member of the International Astronomical Union.
• He has discovered a dozen asteroids (or minor planets) ^[5] including the 9767 Midsomer Norton, in 1992, which he named after his home town.^[6] Asteroid 4713 Steel is named after him.^[7]
• He also discovered the asteroids 5263 Arrius and 6828 Elbsteel which were named for his sons by the International Astronomical Union. Amongst his other discoveries are:

10107 Kenny - named for his father; 16578 Essjayess - named for his mother (her initials are SJS); 24734 Kareness - named for his elder sister; 55815 Melindakim - named for his middle sister; 58196 Ashleyess - named for his youngest sister; and 69311 Russ - named for his brother. However, his favourite naming is 7345 Happer, which is named for the character Felix Happer in the movie Local Hero, who really wanted a comet to be named for him.

• There is a robot named after Duncan (viz. Robot Steel) in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel The Hammer of God^[8]
• He has worked for both NASA and the European Space Agency^[9]
• He is author of 130 scientific papers and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles,^[10][11][12]
• He has appeared in many TV and radio programmes, including The Sky at Night,^[13][14]
• Duncan was Science Adviser for the two-hour documentary 'Three Minutes to Impact', which won an Emmy in 1998.
• He was one of six foreign members of NASA’s Spaceguard committee in 1991-92 and was the only non-US member of the Near-Earth Object Interception and Deflection committee^[15]
• He was a member of the British Delegation to the OECD Global Science Forum conference on Near-Earth Objects, 2003.^[16][17]

Personal life

Duncan lived in Knutsford, Cheshire, for four years before moving back to his current home in Australia. He has also lived in the USA, New Zealand , Australia and Sweden, and visited over sixty other countries.^[18]

He named the asteroids 5263 Arrius and 6828 Elbsteel after his sons Harrison Callum Bertram Steel (b.1992) and Elliot Lewis Barnaby Steel (b. 1995). Harry's asteroid couldn't be called Harrison because there was already one of those (George Harrison), and 'Arrius' was the title of a poem by Catullus that Bill Smith had Duncan translate in Latin class at MNGS (about a Roman who dropped his aitches); whilst Elliot's asteroid couldn't be called that because there was already one named Eliot (for T.S. Eliot).

References

1. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2000/jan/06/technology
2. ^ http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/news/Shop-s-T-shirt-sales-sent-orbit/article-1862519-detail/article.html
3. ^ http://www.sis-group.org.uk/abstract/steel2.htm
4. ^ http://aca.unsw.edu.au/People/Steel.htm
5. ^ http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/news/Shop-s-T-shirt-sales-sent-orbit/article-1862519-detail/article.html
6. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2000/jan/06/technology
7. ^ http://www.piperfilms.com.au/Collaborators.html
8. ^ http://www.piperfilms.com.au/Collaborators.html
9. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/feb/03/spaceexploration.comment
10. ^ http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,9865,1112581,00.html
11. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,887677,00.html
12. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1278934,00.html
13. ^ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s223723.htm
14. ^ http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2002_03_17/story_530.asp
15. ^ http://www.sis-group.org.uk/abstract/steel2.htm
16. ^ http://aca.unsw.edu.au/People/Steel.htm
17. ^ http://www.sis-group.org.uk/abstract/steel2.htm
18. ^ http://aca.unsw.edu.au/People/Steel.htm

Persondata
Name	Steel, Duncan
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Date of birth	11 June 1955
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