Space Education & Strategic Applications Volume 1, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2020 | Page 18

Space Education and Strategic Applications Journal
his first scientific paper in 1961. He was awarded a PhD degree in Mathematics in
1963 and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge in the same year.
In the following year he was appointed a Staff Member of the Institute of Astronomy
at the University of Cambridge. Here he began his pioneering work on the nature
of Interstellar Dust, publishing many papers in this field that led to important
paradigm shifts in astronomy. He published the first definitive book on Interstellar
Grains in 1967. In 1973 he was awarded Cambridge University’s highest doctorate
for Science, the ScD.
Chandra Wickramasinghe is acknowledged as a leading expert on interstellar material
and astrobiology. In fact he and Fred Hoyle invented the word Astrobiology
for the burgeoning discipline that married astronomy with biology. Chandra, over
a lifetime, has made very many important contributions in these fields. In 1974, he
first proposed the theory that dust in interstellar space and in comets was largely
organic, a theory that was shortly afterwards vindicated and effectively led to the
birth of the theory of cometary panspermia.
Jointly with the late Sir Fred Hoyle he was awarded the International Dag Hammarskjold
Gold Medal for Science in 1986. Chandra Wickramasinghe was a UNDP
Consultant and Advisor to the President of Sri Lanka in 1982-84, and played a
key role in the setting up of the Institute of Fundamental Studies in Sri Lanka. In
1983/84 he was appointed the founder Director of the Institute of Fundamental
Studies by President J.R. Jayawardene. In 1992 he was decorated by the President
of Sri Lanka with the titular honour of Vidya Jyothi.
In 1973, he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Applied
Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at University College, Cardiff, being the
youngest Professor appointed at the University upto that time. He was responsible
for starting an Astrophysics research group in Cardiff under the auspices of a
new Department that was formed under his headship, the Department of Applied
Mathematics and Astronomy. He remained Head of this Department until 1989
by which time the Astronomy Research School in Cardiff was regarded as being
one of the best in the UK. From 1989-1999 he held the post of Professor of Applied
Mathematics and Astronomy within a newly structured School of Mathematics at
Cardiff University of Wales.
In the year 2000, he was appointed Director of the newly formed Cardiff Centre
for Astrobiology. In 2006 he retired from Cardiff University and has since been a
“Professor at Large” in a number of Universities and Institutions worldwide. He
is currently Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, University of
Buckingham, and an Honorary Professor there as well. He is also Honorary Professor
at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, and an Honorary Professor at the Sir
John Kotelawala Defence University of Sri Lanka as well as an Adjunct Professor
at the National Institute of Fundamental Studies in Sri Lanka.
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