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The question of whether we are alone in the Solar System, galaxy or universe is one which has fascinated humanity since the earliest of times. As a starting point to the search for life beyond the Earth, we can examine how and where life arose on Earth, and the type of conditions in which life survives. We can then look for where similar environments might exist on other bodies, either now or in the past.
Professor Monica Grady is 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. She is based at the NHM, and carries out research on and curates the national collection of meteorites. Monica received an honours degree in Chemistry and Geology from the University of Durham in 1979, then went on to complete a Ph.D. on carbon in stony meteorites at the University of Cambridge in 1982. Since then, Monica has continued to specialise in the study of meteorites, and carried out this research at Cambridge, then the Open University in Milton Keynes, prior to joining the Natural History Museum in 1991. Monica has collected meteorites in the cold desert of Antarctica and the hot desert of the Nullarbor in Australia. Her particular research interests are in the fields of carbon and nitrogen stable isotope geochemistry of primitive meteorites and of martian meteorites, interstellar components in meteorites, micrometeorites, and also in astrobiology and the possibilities of life elsewhere in the cosmos. Asteroid (4731) was named 'Monicagrady' in her honour. In 2003, Monica gave the Royal Institution Christmas lectures on the theme 'Voyage in Space and Time'.
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