Monica Grady

Monica Mary Grady (born 1958) 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". 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. Asteroid (4731) was named Monicagrady in her honour.

Following her televised Royal Institution Christmas Lecture in 2003, and whilst still Head of the Meteorites and Cosmic Mineralogy Division in the Department of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum and Honorary Professor of Meteoritics at University College London, Professor Grady entered into a series of conversations with Contemporary British Artist Jo Bradford. From 2003 - 2005, Grady collaborated with Bradford in the "Constructing Space" sci-art project. Prof. Grady's role was as the 'scientist in conversation' throughout the project. Taking inspiration and insight from the daily discussions, Bradford worked with Grady at the Natural History Museum. Bradford built a temporary photographic darkroom in the basement of the Natural HIstory Museum, London and created several large scale luminogram / cliché verre / photogram artworks there, using meteorites and interstellar dust from the museum's extensive collection in the making of the work. One original artwork "Saturn's Rings" was presented to Grady in thanks.

Professor Grady is the oldest of eight children; her youngest sister, Dr Ruth Grady, is a Senior Lecturer in microbiology at The University of Manchester, UK. Grady's husband, Ian Wright is also a meteoriticist.

Statement from Monica Grady: "My biography is a bald statement of who I am and what I do. It does not give any flavour of what I have been doing in the thirty years (no, it can�t really be thirty years since I started in meteoritics, can it?) I have been studying extraterrestrial materials. I started out as a stable isotope geochemist, analysing carbon in meteorites. I progressed from burning bits of grey powder to examining thin sections of meteorites when I moved in 1991 from the Open University to the Natural History Museum. I worked for many years under the guidance of Dr Bob Hutchison, who taught me how to recognize chondrules (but not necessarily how they formed). On Bob�s retirement in 1997, I succeeded him as leader of the meteorite research team at the Museum. One of my main projects there was to edit the 5th edition of the Catalogue of Meteorites, which was produced in 2000. I suspect that this might be the last printed edition of the work, as it has been (quite rightly) superseded by electronic databases (especially the Meteoritical Bulletin Database) that can be updated far more rapidly and efficiently. I returned to the OU in 2005, where I dabble my fingers in lots of pies. I have some expertise in infra red and optical microspectroscopy, and have worked with astronomers in order to make connections between dust observed around stars with that analysed in the laboratory. I�m currently working with a team of Norwegian scientists to develop a miniature combined infra red spectrometer and microscope, for deployment on the surface of Mars or an asteroid. I have led major research programmes studying meteorites; currently, my main work is in trying to understand the history of carbon and water on Mars, and interactions between surface, atmosphere and hydro(cryo)sphere through investigation of minor components in Martian meteorites.

I joined the Meteoritical Society in 1979, and served as Councillor from 1989 to 1992, and as Secretary from 1992 to 1998. I was elected to Fellowship in 2000. I was an Associate Editor of Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta from 2002-2005. Asteroid (4731) is named �Monicagrady� for me, so I have a vested interest in furthering understanding of the minor bodies that are a significant part of our planetary system. I am firmly committed to public outreach and education opportunities, and believe that the activities of the Meteoritical Society can play an important role in inspiring young people to become the next generation of scientists, technologists and engineers.

In the next few years, the Meteoritical Society will be facing some interesting challenges. One of those is the shift in publications from paper-based to electronic media. Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences is a highly-regarded journal, and its publication is probably the most high profile action of the Society. Switching publisher to Wiley-Blackwell will help us advance with the next wave of changes in the publishing industry - and I will be taking careful note that the interests of members of the Society are not lost when we become part of a bigger publishing consortium.

Another challenge that the Society continues to face is the collection of meteorites from desert locations, where unregulated trade in specimens can not only confuse the issue of a specimen�s provenance, but also removes a valuable natural scientific and educational resource from its recovery site. This trade has greatly benefitted meteoriticists, especially in the provision of rare and unusual specimens for study. But we must be aware that the countries from which desert meteorites are currently collected are the owners of the specimens. I would like to see the Meteoritical Society helping to build and develop meteorite expertise within these countries, such that they too can benefit (possibly financially, certainly educationally) from the stones that have fallen from the sky to their land."

Selected bibliography

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

External links

• Making of the Constructing Space Project-http://www.flickr.com/photos/jobradford/sets/72057594077058507/with/110052499/ - [1] - About the Art-Sci Project, Constructing Space, Natural History Museum
• Constructing Space by Jo Bradford - http://www.jobradford.com/section425231_356696.html - [2] - Website for artwork in 'Constructing Space' project,
• MetSic - http://www.meteoriticalsociety.org/news_display.cfm?code=news_intro&CFID=7765885&CFTOKEN=97644844

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Name	Grady, Monica
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Date of birth	1958
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