Rolf Mewe: a careerdevoted to X-ray spectroscopy

Jelle S. Kaastra

SRON

Rolf Mewe: 20 July 1935 – 4 May 2004

Early career

• Taken by his father to space travel lectures 1952• 1956 study at Zeeman lab, Amsterdam with

Klinkenberg (“old fashioned spectroscopy”)• 1959-1961 Army service, study of radio-active

fall out• 1961-1970 Rijnhuizen, study of gas discharges

and hot fusion plasmas; thesis 1969 with C. Braams and H.G. van Bueren

SRON

• SRON (predecessors) founded 1961 by Kees de Jager

• Bert Brinkman had solar X-ray observations

• Rolf Mewe appointed at SRON 1970: simple task: “develop X-ray spectroscopy”

• Rolf’s own words in 2000: “I was so naïve to promise to try this”

The ANS satellite

• First Dutch Satellite• Launch 1974• Soft X-rays (0.25 keV)• Discovery of X-rays

from Sirius (Nature paper Mewe et al. 1975)

Chandra

• Rolf involved in making science case and simulations for AXAFChandra

• LETGS his favorite spectrometer

• Won lottery to be at launch of Chandra

Other satellites

• ANS 1974• Einstein 1978• EXOSAT 1984• YOHKOH 1991• EUVE 1992• ASCA 1993• BeppoSAX 1996• Chandra & XMM-Newton 1999

Spectral simulations

Spectroscopic codes

• 1972 Mewe

• 1975 Mewe-Gronenschild

• 1985 Mewe-Gronenschild-van den Oord

• 1990 Meka

• 1994 Mekal

• 1992 SPEX

Most cited X-ray papers (ADS)

Authors Year Citations

Raymond & Smith 1977 1413

Morrison & McCammon (abs) 1983 1270

Tanaka et al. (ASCA) 1994 719

Lampton et al. (parameters) 1976 712

Giacconi et al. (Einstein) 1979 621

Mewe, Gronenschild & vdOord 1985 614

He-like line diagnostics

• Work on He-like triplets with Hans Schrijver 1975-1980

• Recently followed up with Delphine Porquet et al.

DEM modeling, stellar work

• Collaboration with many people

• Janusz Sylwester• Karel Schrijver• Manuel Güdel• And many others

Rolf and his Army

• Thanks to alternative civilian service, well-educated conscientious objectors served Rolf as unpaid data-aids:

• Frans Alkemade• Remco van der Rijst• Max Duijsens

Meka

• Development triggered by needs of SNR work at SRON-Leiden around 1990

• Restructuring the Mewe-Gronenschild-vdOord code and improving continuum

• NEI effects

Meka Mekal (1994)

The Mekal code

Rolf at work

Rolf and his office

Filling the new officeFully loaded …

Rolf as a teacher

What is this about? Aha!

Rolf as a project leader

Some characteristic poses

The future of SPEX

• Code is maintained and updated by Kaastra & Raassen, see @ sron web-site

Dying in the armour…

“niets bestaat dat niet iets anders aanraakt”

(“nothing exists that does not touch something else”)