Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (IAA)

Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

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Obituary : John Michael (“Mike”) Pearson (1933-2024)

We are very sad to announce that our colleague and friend Mike Pearson passed away on December 18, 2024. For almost four decades Mike spent two months a year visiting our Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics. His last visit was in October 2024.

Michael Pearson was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England to Charles Vernon Pearson, a tailor, and Kathleen Mary Dawson, a schoolteacher. He was educated at Sowerby Bridge Grammar School, King’s College, London (BSc), and McMaster University (PhD). After a post-doc year at Case Institute in Cleveland, he joined the Department of Nuclear Physics at Université de Montréal as a theoretical nuclear physicist.

In addition to hundreds of scientific papers (the last of which was published with his colleagues from ULB in October 2024), Mike wrote two books: A Theory of Waves (1966) and Nuclear Physics: Energy and Matter (1986). Just days before he died unexpectedly on December 18th he completed drafting his third book, a history of nuclear energy.

He was also a hill-walker and Alpine hiker, long-distance runner, cross-country skier, reader of nineteenth-century novels in English, French, and German (Russian in translation), bread addict, marmalade-lover, strict grammarian, Guardian reader, Guinness-drinker, maker of porridge, and user of pocket protectors and clip-on sunglasses. He never owned a pair of jeans.

Mike is survived by his sister and brother-in-law Ann and Jack Taylor in West Midlands, England, his children Susan and David (from his first marriage) and Sarah (from his second marriage), Sarah’s daughter Nina, his wife of forty-three years Elaine Bander, his brother-in-law and sister-in-law Yigal and Ellen Bander in Baton Rouge, LA, his many loving nieces and nephews, and the graduate students and post-docs whom he nurtured and who remained friends and collaborators.

He was loved, admired, nagged, coached, adored, criticized, teased, and respected. At ninety-one, he strode briskly upright throughout Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. We thought he would go on forever. We were wrong.



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Our research interests cover various fields, among which nucleosynthesis, nuclear astrophysics, stellar evolution and chemical composition, binary stars, neutron stars...

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