Monica Grady
The British planetary scientist who curated meteorites at the Natural History Museum, edited the world catalogue and worked on the Rosetta comet mission.
Key facts
- Born
- 1958
- Nationality
- British
- Field
- Planetary scientist
Monica Mary Grady grew up in Leeds and studied chemistry and geology before completing a doctorate on carbon in meteorites. She spent many years at the Natural History Museum in London, where she was head of the meteorites and cosmic mineralogy section, and in 2005 she became a professor at the Open University.
At the museum she compiled the fifth edition of the Catalogue of Meteorites, published in 2000, which listed more than 22,000 meteorites then known. Her research has focused on carbon and nitrogen in meteorites, including the carbonates in Martian meteorites such as ALH 84001, and what they reveal about water and possible life on Mars.
Grady was part of the team for Ptolemy, an instrument on the Philae lander of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, which in 2014 made the first landing on a comet. Ptolemy was designed to measure the isotopes of light elements in the comet's surface.
She is well known for explaining space science to the public, including school pupils, on radio and television. She was appointed CBE in 2012 for services to space science, and an asteroid, 4731 Monicagrady, is named after her.