Chandra Wickramasinghe

Who is Chandra Wickramasinghe?

Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe is a Sri Lankan-born British mathematician, astronomer and astrobiologist. He is currently Professor and Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, a post he has held since 2011. Chandra Wickramasinghe has written 24 books about astrophysics and related topics; he has made frequent appearances on radio, television and film, and he writes extensive online blogs and articles.

His research interests include the interstellar medium, infrared astronomy, light scattering theory, applications of solid-state physics to astronomy, the early Solar System, comets, astrochemistry, the origin of life and astrobiology. A student and collaborator of Fred Hoyle, the pair worked jointly for over 40 years as influential proponents of panspermia. In 1974 they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic.

He is currently a consultant team member of the Radio Science Investigation experiment onbord the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission which will arrive at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014. He is also making further identifications of spectral features in comets and in the interstellar medium.