Zdenek Kopal; Noted Astronomer, Author

Zdenek Kopal, an astronomer whose discoveries about neighboring stars called close binaries shook astrophysics, has died of cancer at age 79.

Kopal died at his home in Wilmslow in northwest England on Wednesday.

Kopal’s discovery of how close binaries work “ranks with the most important developments in astrophysics of the 20th Century,” astronomer Fritz D. Kahn wrote in the Independent newspaper. Kahn said Kopal produced evidence that close binaries apparently defied the general rule that massive stars evolve faster than less massive stars.

Born into a distinguished academic family in Litomysl, Bohemia, which became Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I, Kopal attended Prague University.

During World War II, he worked on a range of military problems at MIT. He developed new mathematical tools that were published in 1955 in the book “Numerical Analysis,” now a classic in the field.

In 1951, Kopal took up the first chair of astronomy at Manchester University, a position he held for 30 years. He vigorously attacked problems of close binary systems and published a book on the subject in 1959.

Kopal led a Manchester University team that helped map the moon in 1958. The project, funded by the U.S. Air Force, was essential for the success of the U.S. space program’s lunar flybys and landings.

Kopal helped write or edit more than 30 books and founded three journals, including Icarus in 1962 and Astrophysics and Space Science in 1969, which he edited until shortly before his death.