Chandra Wickramasinghe

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Chandra Wickramasinghe bigraphy, stories - Astronomer

Chandra Wickramasinghe : biography

20 January 1939 –

Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe (born 20 January 1939) is a Sri Lankan-born British mathematician. He is currently Director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, a private company and charity.

He was a student and collaborator of 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. His latest work attempts to extend the hypothesis of cometary panspermia to that of cosmic ancestry in collaboration with Carl H. Gibson, Rhawn Joseph and Rudolph Schild. He is also making further identifications of spectral features in comets and in the interstellar medium.

He has advocated that elementary living organisms like the lichen-forming alga spores present in the Red rain in Kerala are of extraterrestrial origin and that pathogens as the SARS virus also arrived on Earth from deep space carried in asteroids and comets. He has attempted to generate controversies in both academic and public circles, by bringing his arguments into the discussion about creationism and evolutionism. Though Chandra Wickramasinghe’s latest speculations have no support from the scientific community, he has fascinated some public media.

Participation in the creation-evolution debate

Wickramasinghe and his mentor Fred Hoyle have also used their data to argue in favor of cosmic ancestry, . Published in Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (2003). Authors: Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. ISBN 0-671-49263-2

Our Place in the Cosmos: The Unfinished Revolution by Wickramasinghe and Hoyle. (1993)Evolution From Space (The Omni Lecture) and Other Papers on the Origin of Life. By Fred Hoyle (Enslow; Hillside, NJ; 1982). By Alec Grynspan ( 9 November 1997) and against evolution.