Monica Grady

Professor Monica Grady CBE
Born	(1958-07-15) 15 July 1958
Nationality	British
Education	St Aidan's College, Durham (1979) Darwin College, Cambridge (1982)
Occupation	Professor of Planetary and Space Science at the Open University
Years active	Since 1979
Known for	Work on meteorites
Television	Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (2003)

Monica Mary Grady, CBE (born 15 July 1958 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK), 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

Life and work

Grady is a practising Catholic, the oldest of eight children. Her youngest sister, Dr Ruth Grady, is a Senior Lecturer in microbiology at the University of Manchester. Grady's husband, Professor Ian Wright, is also a planetary scientist at the Open University. Ian is Principal Investigator of the Ptolemy instrument on the Philae lander, part of ESA's Rosetta spacecraft. Ian and Monica have one son, Jack Wright, who works in the film industry.

Grady graduated from the University of Durham in 1979, then went on to complete a PhD on carbon in stony meteorites at Darwin College, Cambridge in 1982. She studied under Professor Colin Pillinger. Grady was formerly based at the Natural History Museum, where she curated the UK's national collection of meteorites. 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.

Grady was appointed a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society in 2000, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2012 and a Fellow of the Geochemical Society in 2015 (these are honorary appointments, bestowed by the President and Council of each Society, following nomination by peer-scientists). She has been a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1990, and a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland since 1992 (these are appointments contingent upon annual subscription). From 2012-2013, she was President of the Meteoritical Society.

Grady gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2003, on the subject "A Voyage in Space and Time" Asteroid (4731) was named Monicagrady in her honour.

In 2010, Grady returned to Durham, spending 3 months at St Mary's College as a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study Grady was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to space sciences.

In 2014, Grady spoke to BBC News about the aims and the significance of the spacecraft Rosetta. Grady said: "The biggest question that we are trying to get an answer to is: where did life on Earth come from?" A video of her highly enthusiastic reaction when Philae successfully landed on the comet was published widely around the internet on many media sources. On 31 July 2015 she appeared on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

Selected bibliography

• Publication list
• "Catalogue of Meteorites”, 2000, Cambridge University Press.
• "Search for Life", 2001, Natural History Museum.
• "Astrobiology", 2001, Smithsonian Books.

External links

• The Open University
• Meteoritical Society
• Royal Astronomical Society
• Mineralogical Society of GB and Ireland
• Institute of Physics
• Geochemical Society