Chandra Wickramasinghe
Vidya Jothi Professor Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe (born 20 January 1939) is a Sri Lankan-born British astrophysicist and astrobiologist. He is currently Director of the Buckingham University Centre for Astrobiology.
He was a student and collaborator of Sir Fred Hoyle. Their joint work on the infrared spectra of interstellar grains led to developing the hypothesis of panspermia. It proposes that cosmic dust in the interstellar medium and in comets is partly organic, and that life on Earth was 'seeded' from space rather than arising through abiogenesis. He is currently working on extending the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe hypothesis of cometary panspermia to a cosmological context in collaboration with Carl H. Gibson and R.E. Schild. He is also making further identifications of spectral features in comets and in the interstellar medium with degraded.
"My most significant astronomical contribution was to develop the theory of organic grains in comets and in the interstellar medium. This was done during the 1970s and 1980s, and it is now accepted by everyone almost without remembering its origins! I feel I also played a part in the birth of the science of astrobiology."
He is best known for his claim that the lichen-forming alga spores occasionally present in the Red rain in Kerala are of extraterrestrial origin, and that pathogens like viruses also arrived to Earth from deep space taking hitch hikes on asteroids and comets.
Read more about Chandra Wickramasinghe: Education, Scientific Career, Detection of Living Cells in The Stratosphere, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Honours and Awards, Books, Key Articles, Further Reading