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Michael John Seaton FRS was an influential British mathematician, atomic physicist, and astronomer.
He was born in Bristol, and educated at Wallington County Grammar School, a grammar school in Surrey, where he won prizes for his achievements in chemistry.
From 1941 to 1946 he served in the wartime Royal Air Force as a Flight Lieutenant. In this capacity he served first in RAF Bomber Command, navigating Lancaster Bombers, and later in one of the elite Pathfinder squadrons, such was his capacity to apply his understanding of mathematics to the task before him.
After demobilisation, he returned to his studies, and the start of a long career at University College London. Gaining a First Class BSc in physics just two years later, he continued, obtaining his PhD on Quantal Calculations of certain reaction rates with applications to Astrophysical and Geophysical problems in 1951. He later did important work on the Quantum Defect Theory.
With a break as Chargé de Recherche at the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris from 1954–55, he rose through the ranks at the Department of Physics at UCL, becoming a Reader in 1959, and Professor of Physics in 1963. He was made a Fellow of the College in 1972, the year in which the Departments of Physics and Astronomy merged. He held the status of Professor Emeritus and Honorary Research Fellow from 1988 until his death.
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