Monica Grady

Who is Monica Grady?

Monica Mary Grady, CBE is a leading British space scientist, primarily known for her work on meteorites. She is currently Professor of Planetary and Space Science at the Open University.

Grady was formerly based at the Natural History Museum, where she curated the UK's national collection of meteorites. She graduated from the University of Durham in 1979, then went on to complete a Ph.D. on carbon in stony meteorites at Darwin College, Cambridge in 1982. Since then, she has built up an international reputation in meteoritics, publishing many papers on the carbon and nitrogen isotope geochemistry of primitive meteorites, on Martian meteorites, and on interstellar components of meteorites. She gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2003, on the subject "A Voyage in Space and Time", which coincided with the attempted landing of Beagle 2. During the lectures she conjectured without evidence that Beagle 2 was stuck in crater, when in fact the mission was already lost. Monica also made a brief appearance in the 1995 Christmas Lectures, when in the final lecture of that series she briefly presented a Martian meteorite to Dr James Jackson, who used it for a demonstration.