Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe (born 20 January 1939) is a Sri Lankan-born British mathematician, astronomer and astrobiologist of

Sinhalese Sinhala may refer to: * Something of or related to the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka * Sinhalese people * Sinhala language, one of the three official languages used in Sri Lanka * Sinhala script, a writing system for the Sinhala language ** Sinha ...

ethnicity. His research interests include the interstellar medium,

infrared astronomy Infrared astronomy is a sub-discipline of astronomy which specializes in the observation and analysis of astronomical objects using infrared (IR) radiation. The wavelength of infrared light ranges from 0.75 to 300 micrometers, and falls in betw ...

, light scattering theory, applications of solid-state physics to astronomy, the early

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

, comets,

astrochemistry Astrochemistry is the study of the abundance and reactions of molecules in the Universe, and their interaction with radiation. The discipline is an overlap of astronomy and chemistry. The word "astrochemistry" may be applied to both the Solar Syst ...

, the

origin of life In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...

and astrobiology. A student and collaborator of

Fred Hoyle Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper. He also held controversial stances on other sci ...

, the pair worked jointly for over 40 years as influential proponents of

panspermia Panspermia () is the hypothesis, first proposed in the 5th century BCE by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacec ...

. In 1974 they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic, later proven to be correct. Wickramasinghe has advanced numerous fringe claims, including the argument that various outbreaks of illnesses on Earth are of extraterrestrial origins, including the

1918 flu pandemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

and certain outbreaks of

polio Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe s ...

and

mad cow disease Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is an incurable and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. Symptoms include abnormal behavior, trouble walking, and weight loss. Later in the course of t ...

. For the 1918 flu pandemic they hypothesised that

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

ary dust brought the virus to Earth simultaneously at multiple locations—a view almost universally dismissed by experts on this pandemic. Claims connecting terrestrial disease and extraterrestrial pathogens have been rejected by the scientific community. Wickramasinghe has written more than 30 books about astrophysics and related topics; he has made appearances on radio, television and film, and he writes online blogs and articles. He has appeared on

BBC Horizon ''Horizon'' is an ongoing and long-running British documentary television series on BBC Two that covers science and philosophy. History The programme was first broadcast on 2 May 1964 with "The World of Buckminster Fuller" which explored the ...

, UK Channel 5 and the

History Channel History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney ...

. He appeared on the 2013 Discovery Channel program "Red Rain". He has an association with

Daisaku Ikeda is a Japanese Buddhist philosopher, educator, author, and nuclear disarmament advocate. He served as the third president and then honorary president of the Soka Gakkai, the largest of Japan's new religious movements. Ikeda is the founding pre ...

, president of the

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

sect

Soka Gakkai International Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is an international Nichiren Buddhist organisation founded in 1975 by Daisaku Ikeda, as an umbrella organization of Soka Gakkai, which declares approximately 12 million adherents in 192 countries and territorie ...

, that led to the publication of a dialogue with him, first in Japanese and later in English, on the topic of ''Space and Eternal Life''.

Education and career

Wickramasinghe studied at Royal College, Colombo, the

University of Ceylon The University of Ceylon was the only university in Sri Lanka (earlier Ceylon) from 1942 until 1972. It had several constituent campuses at various locations around Sri Lanka. The University of Ceylon Act No. 1 of 1972, replaced it with the Unive ...

(where he graduated in 1960 with a

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

First Class Honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...

in mathematics), and at

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

and

Jesus College, Cambridge Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes fr ...

, where he obtained his PhD and ScD degrees. Following his education, Wickramasinghe was a Fellow of

from 1963 to 1973, until he became professor of applied mathematics and astronomy at

University College Cardiff , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...

. Wickramasinghe was a consultant and advisor to the President of Sri Lanka from 1982 to 1984, and played a key role in founding the Institute of Fundamental Studies in Sri Lanka. After fifteen years at University College Cardiff, Wickramasinghe took an equivalent position in the

University of Cardiff , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...

, a post he held from 1990 until 2006. After retirement in 2006, he incubated the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology as a special project reporting to the president of the university. In 2011 the project closed down, losing its funding in a series of UK educational cut backs. After this event, Wickramasinghe was offered the opportunity to move to the

University of Buckingham , mottoeng = Flying on Our Own Wings , established = 1973; as university college1983; as university , type = Private , endowment = , administrative_staff = 97 academic, 103 support , chanc ...

as Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, University of Buckingham where he has been since 2011. He maintains his part-time position as a UK Professor at Cardiff University. In 2015 he was elected

Visiting scholar In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic for which the visitor ...

, Churchill College, Cambridge, England 2015/16. He is a co-founder and board member of the Institute for the Study of Panspermia and Astroeconomics, set up in Japan in 2014, and the Editor-in-Chief of the '' Journal of Astrobiology & Outreach''. He was a Visiting By-Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, England 2015/16; Professor and Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the

, a post he has held since 2011; Affiliated Visiting Professor, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka; and a board member and research director at the Institute for the Study of Panspermia and Astroeconomics, Ogaki-City, Gifu, Japan. In 2017, Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe was appointed adjunct professor in the Department of Physics, at the

University of Ruhuna The University of Ruhuna ( si, රුහුණ විශ්වවිද්‍යාලය, රෝහණ සරසවිය (Ruhuṇa Viśvavidyālaya, Rohana sarasaviya),; ta, ருகுண பல்கலைக் கழகம்) is a publ ...

, Matara, Sri Lanka.

Research

In 1960 he commenced work in Cambridge on his PhD degree under the supervision of

, and published his first scientific paper "On Graphite Particles as Interstellar Grains” in ''

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ''Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society'' (MNRAS) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research in astronomy and astrophysics. It has been in continuous existence since 1827 and publishes letters and papers reporting orig ...

'' in 1962. 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, Cambridge The Institute of Astronomy (IoA) is the largest of the three astronomy departments in the University of Cambridge, and one of the largest astronomy sites in the United Kingdom. Around 180 academics, postdocs, visitors and assistant staff work ...

. Here he continued to work on the nature of interstellar dust, publishing many papers in this field, that led to a consideration of carbon-containing grains as well as the older silicate models. Wickramasinghe published the first definitive book on ''Interstellar Grains'' in 1967. He has made many contributions to this field, publishing over 350 papers in peer-reviewed journals, over 75 of which are in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

''. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe further proposed a radical kind of

that included the claim that extraterrestrial life forms enter the Earth's atmosphere and were possibly responsible for epidemic outbreaks, new diseases, and genetic novelty that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe contended was necessary for

macroevolution Macroevolution usually means the evolution of large-scale structures and traits that go significantly beyond the intraspecific variation found in microevolution (including speciation). In other words, macroevolution is the evolution of taxa abov ...

. Chandra Wickramasinghe had the longest-running collaboration with Fred Hoyle. Their publications on books and papers arguing for panspermia and a cosmic hypothesis of life are controversial and, in particular detail, essentially contra the scientific consensus in both astrophysics and

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

. Several claims made by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe between 1977 and 1981, such as a report of having detected interstellar

cellulose Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of β(1→4) linked D-glucose units. Cellulose is an important structural component of the primary cell w ...

, were criticised by one author as

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable clai ...

Phil Plait Philip Cary Plait (born September 30, 1964), also known as The Bad Astronomer, is an American astronomer, skeptic, and popular science blogger. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objec ...

has described Wickramasinghe as a " fringe scientist" who "jumps on everything, with little or no evidence, and says it’s from outer space".

Organic molecules in space

In 1974 Wickramasinghe first proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic, and followed this up with other research confirming the hypothesis. Wickramasinghe also proposed and confirmed the existence of polymeric compounds based on the molecule

formaldehyde Formaldehyde ( , ) (systematic name methanal) is a naturally occurring organic compound with the formula and structure . The pure compound is a pungent, colourless gas that polymerises spontaneously into paraformaldehyde (refer to section ...

(H₂CO).

and Wickramasinghe later proposed the identification of bicyclic aromatic compounds from an analysis of the ultraviolet extinction absorption at 2175A., thus demonstrating the existence of

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon A polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is a class of organic compounds that is composed of multiple aromatic rings. The simplest representative is naphthalene, having two aromatic rings and the three-ring compounds anthracene and phenanthrene. ...

molecules in space.

Hoyle–Wickramasinghe model of panspermia

Throughout his career, Wickramasinghe, along with his collaborator Fred Hoyle, has advanced the

hypothesis, that proposes that life on Earth is, at least in part, of extraterrestrial origin. The Hoyle–Wickramasinghe model of panspermia include the assumptions that dormant viruses and desiccated DNA and RNA can survive unprotected in space; that small bodies such as

asteroids An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

and

comets A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ar ...

can protect the "seeds of life", including DNA and RNA, living, fossilized, or dormant life, cellular or non-cellular; and that the collisions of asteroids, comets, and moons have the potential to spread these "seeds of life" throughout an individual star system and then onward to others. The most contentious issue around the Hoyle–Wickramasinghe model of the panspermia hypothesis is the corollary of their first two propositions that viruses and bacteria continue to enter the Earth's atmosphere from space, and are hence responsible for many major epidemics throughout history. Towards the end of their collaboration, Wickramasinghe and Hoyle hypothesised that

abiogenesis In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...

occurred close to the

Galactic Center The Galactic Center or Galactic Centre is the rotational center, the barycenter, of the Milky Way galaxy. Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, a compact ra ...

before panspermia carried life throughout the Milky Way, and stated a belief that such a process could occur in many galaxies throughout the Universe.

Detection of living cells in the stratosphere

On 20 January 2001 the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) conducted a balloon flight from

Hyderabad, India Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the '' de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern In ...

to collect stratospheric dust from a height of 41 km (135,000 ft) with a view to testing for the presence of living cells. The collaborators on this project included a team of UK scientists led by Wickramasinghe. In a paper presented at a SPIE conference in San Diego in 2002 the detection of evidence for viable microorganisms from 41 km above the Earth's surface was presented. However, the experiment did not present evidence as to whether the findings are incoming microbes from space rather than microbes carried up to 41 km from the surface of the Earth. In 2005 the ISRO group carried out a second stratospheric sampling experiment from 41 km altitude and reported the isolation of three new species of bacteria including one that they named '' Janibacter hoylei'' sp.nov. in honour of Fred Hoyle. However, these facts do not prove that bacteria on Earth originated in the cosmic environment. Samplings of the stratosphere have also been carried out by Yang ''et al.'' (2005, 2009). During the experiment strains of highly radiation-resistant '' Deinococcus'' bacterium were detected at heights up to 35 km. Nevertheless, these authors have abstained from linking these discoveries to panspermia. Wickramasinghe was also involved in coordinating analyses of the

red rain in Kerala The Kerala red rain phenomenon was a blood rain event that occurred in Wayanad district region of Malabar on Monday, 15 July 1957 and the colour subsequently turned yellow and also 25 July to 23 September 2001, when heavy downpours of red-col ...

in collaborations with Godfrey Louis.

Extraterrestrial pathogens

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe have advanced the argument that various outbreaks of illnesses on Earth are of extraterrestrial origins, including the

and certain outbreaks of

and

. For the 1918 flu pandemic they hypothesised that

ary dust brought the virus to Earth simultaneously at multiple locations—a view almost universally dismissed by external experts on this pandemic. On 24 May 2003 ''

The Lancet ''The Lancet'' is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal and one of the oldest of its kind. It is also the world's highest-impact academic journal. It was founded in England in 1823. The journal publishes original research articles, ...

'' published a letter from Wickramasinghe, jointly signed by Milton Wainwright and

Jayant Narlikar Jayant Vishnu Narlikar (born 19 July 1938) is an Indian astrophysicist and emeritus professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). He developed with Sir Fred Hoyle the conformal gravity theory, known as Hoyl ...

, in which they hypothesised that the

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsk ...

that causes

severe acute respiratory syndrome Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS coronavirus species, ''sev ...

(SARS) could be extraterrestrial in origin instead of originating from chickens. ''The Lancet'' subsequently published three responses to this letter, showing that the hypothesis was not evidence-based, and casting doubts on the quality of the experiments referenced by Wickramasinghe in his letter. Claims connecting terrestrial disease and extraterrestrial pathogens have been rejected by the scientific community. In 2020, Wickramasinghe and colleagues published a paper claiming that Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the virus responsible for the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

was also of extraterrestrial origin, the claim was criticised for lacking evidence.

Polonnaruwa

On 29 December 2012 a green fireball was observed in Polonnaruwa Province, Sri Lanka. It disintegrated into fragments that fell to the Earth near the villages of Aralaganwila and Dimbulagala and in a rice field near Dalukkane. Rock samples were submitted to the Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health in

Colombo Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo m ...

. The rocks were sent to the University of Cardiff in Wales for analysis, where Chandra Wickramasinghe's team analyzed them and claimed that they contained extraterrestrial diatoms. From January to March 2013, five papers were published in the fringe ''

Journal of Cosmology The ''Journal of Cosmology'' describes itself as a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal of cosmology, although the quality of the process has been questioned. The journal has been closely related historically with a similar online websit ...

'' outlining various results from teams in the United Kingdom, United States and Germany. However, independent experts in

meteoritics Meteoritics is the science that deals with meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. It is closely connected to cosmochemistry, mineralogy and geochemistry. A specialist who studies meteoritics is known as a ''meteoriticist''. Scientific research in ...

stated that the object analyzed by Wickramasinghe's team was of terrestrial origin, a

fulgurite Fulgurites (), commonly known as "fossilized lightning", are natural tubes, clumps, or masses of sintered, vitrified, and/or fused soil, sand, rock, organic debris and other sediments that sometimes form when lightning discharges into ground. ...

created by lightning strikes on Earth. Experts in diatoms complemented the statement, saying that the organisms found in the rock represented a wide range of extant terrestrial taxa, confirming their earthly origin. Wickramasinghe and collaborators responded, using X-ray diffraction,

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as ...

isotope analysis, and scanning electron microscope observations, in a March 2013 paper asserting that the rocks they found were indeed meteorites, instead of being created by lightning strikes on Earth as stated by scientists from the University of Peradeniya. However, these claims were also criticised again not providing evidence that the rocks were actually meteorites.

Cephalopod alien origin

In 2018, Wickramasinghe and over 30 other authors published a paper in '' Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology'' entitled "Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic?" which argued in favour of panspermia as the origin of the Cambrian explosion, and posited that cephalopods are alien lifeforms that originated from frozen eggs that were transported to earth via meteor. The claims gained widespread press coverage. Virologist Karin Mölling, in a companion commentary published in the same journal, stated that the claims "cannot be taken seriously".

Participation in the creation-evolution debate

Wickramasinghe and his mentor

have also used their data to argue in favor of cosmic ancestry, and against the idea of life emerging from inanimate objects by

. Wickramasinghe attempts to present scientific evidence to support the notion of cosmic ancestry and "the possibility of high intelligence in the Universe and of many increasing levels of intelligence converging toward a God as an ideal limit." During the 1981 scientific creationist trial in Arkansas, Wickramasinghe was the only scientist testifying for the defense, which in turn was supporting creationism. In addition, he wrote that the '' Archaeopteryx'' fossil finding is a forgery, a charge that the scientific community considers an "absurd" and "ignorant" statement.

Honours and awards

* Commonwealth Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1960-1963
Powell Prize for English Verse
Trinity College, 1961 *

Vidya Jyothi The Vidya Jyothi ( si, විද්‍යාජෝති; ta, வித்யா ஜோதி, translit=Vityā Jōti) is a Sri Lankan Sri Lankan honours system, national honour awarded "''for outstanding scientific and technological achievements''" ...

from the President of Sri Lanka, 1992 *Honorary

DLitt Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or ') is a terminal degree in the humanities that, depending on the country, is a higher doctorate after the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent to a higher doctorate, such as the Doctor ...

, Sōka University (Japan), 1996 *

Doctor of Science Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used f ...

(honoris causa),

, Sri Lanka, 2004
Visiting By-Fellowship

visiting scholar In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic for which the visitor ...

, Churchill College, Cambridge, England 2015/16
Ada Derana Sri Lankan of the Year 2017 - Global Scientist
Wickramasinghe was appointed

Member of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(MBE) in the

2022 New Year Honours The 2022 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 15 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebrations ...

for services to science, astronomy and astrobiology.

Books

*''Interstellar Grains'' (Chapman & Hall, London, 1967) *''Light Scattering Functions for Small Particles with Applications in Astronomy'' (Wiley, New York, 1973) *''Solid-State Astrophysics'' (ed. with D.J. Morgan) (D. Reidel, Boston, 1975) *''Interstellar Matter'' (with F.D. Khan & P.G. Mezger) (Swiss Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1974) *''The Cosmic Laboratory'' (University College of Cardiff, 1975) *''Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe'' (with Fred Hoyle) (J.M. Dent, London, 1978) *''

Diseases from Space ''Diseases from Space'' is a book published in 1979 that was authored by astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, where they propose that many of the most common diseases which afflict humanity, such as influenza, the common cold and w ...

'' (with Fred Hoyle) (J.M. Dent, London, 1979) *''Origin of Life'' (with Fred Hoyle) (University College Cardiff Press, 1979) *''Space Travellers: The Bringers of Life'' (with Fred Hoyle) (University College Cardiff Press, 1981) *''Evolution from Space'' (with Fred Hoyle) (J.M. Dent, London, 1981) *''Is Life an Astronomical Phenomenon?'' (University College Cardiff Press, 1982) *''Why Neo-Darwinism Does Not Work'' (with Fred Hoyle) (University College Cardiff Press, 1982) *''Proofs that Life is Cosmic'' (with Fred Hoyle) (Institute of Fundamental Studies, Sri Lanka, Memoirs no.1, 1982) *''From Grains to Bacteria'' (with Fred Hoyle) (University College Cardiff Press, 1984) *''Fundamental Studies and the Future of Science'' (ed.) (University College Cardiff Press, 1984) *''Living Comets'' (with Fred Hoyle) (University College Cardiff Press, 1985) *''Archaeopteryx, the Primordial Bird'' (with Fred Hoyle) (Christopher Davies, Swansea, 1986) *''The Theory of Cosmic Grains'' (with Fred Hoyle) (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1991) *''Life on Mars? The Case for a Cosmic Heritage'' (with Fred Hoyle) (Clinical Press, Bristol, 1997) *''Astronomical Origins of Life: Steps towards Panspermia'' (with Fred Hoyle) (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2000) *''Cosmic Dragons: Life and Death on Our Planet'' (Souvenir Press, London, 2001) *''Fred Hoyle’s Universe'' (ed. with G. Burbidge and J. Narlikar) (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2003) *''A Journey with Fred Hoyle'' (World Scientific, Singapore, 2005) *''Comets and the Origin of Life'' (with J. Wickramasinghe and W. Napier) (World Scientific, Hackensack NJ, 2010) *
A Journey with Fred Hoyle, Second Edition
' (World Scientific, Singapore, April 2013) *''The search for our cosmic ancestry'', World Scientific, New Jersey 2015, . *

Articles

*Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, N.C., 1962. On graphite particles as interstellar grains, ''Mon.Not.Roy.Astr.Soc.'' 124, 417-433 * *Wickramasinghe, N.C., 1974. Formaldehyde polymers in interstellar space, ''Nature'' 252, 462-463 * *Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, N.C., 1977. Identification of the λ2,200A interstellar absorption feature, ''Nature'' 270, 323-324 * *Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, N.C., 1977. Polysaccharides and infrared spectra of galactic sources, ''Nature'' 268, 610-612 * * * * * *Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, N.C., 1986. The case for life as a cosmic phenomenon, ''Nature'' 322, 509-511 *Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, N.C., 1990. Influenza – evidence against contagion, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 83. 258-261 * * * * *Chandra Wickramasinghe, ''A Journey with Fred Hoyle: The Search for Cosmic Life'', World Scientific Publishing, 2005, *Janaki Wickramasinghe, Chandra Wickramasinghe and William Napier, ''Comets and the Origin of Life'', World Scientific Publishing, 2009, *Chandra Wickramasinghe and Daisaku Ikeda, ''Space and Eternal Life'', Journeyman Press, 1998,

References

External links

Professor Wickramasinghe's profile at the University of Buckingham

Publication List Chandra Wickramasinghe

Astrophysics Data System The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned ...

Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe in conversation withn artist and poet, Himali Singh Soin, podcast, 2022
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wickramasinghe, Chandra 1939 births Academics of Cardiff University Academics of the University of Cambridge Alumni of Royal College, Colombo Alumni of the University of Ceylon Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Astrobiologists 20th-century British astronomers Fellows of Jesus College, Cambridge Living people Panspermia People from Colombo People of British Ceylon Sri Lankan mathematicians Vidya Jyothi Sri Lankan emigrants to the United Kingdom Members of the Order of the British Empire Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom British mathematicians 21st-century British astronomers Indian Space Research Organisation people