Monica Grady

Monica Mary Grady, CBE (born 15 July 1958) is a British space scientist, primarily known for her work on meteorites. and is also the Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University.

Early life Monica Grady is the oldest of eight children and the daughter of teachers. Asteroid (4731) was named Monicagrady in her honour.

In 2010, Grady returned to Durham, spending 3 months at St Mary's College as a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study Grady was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to space sciences.

In 2014, Grady spoke to BBC News about the aims and the significance of the spacecraft Rosetta. Grady said: "The biggest question that we are trying to get an answer to is: where did life on Earth come from?" A video of her highly enthusiastic reaction when Philae successfully landed on the comet was published widely around the internet on many media sources. On 31 July 2015 she appeared on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. an EU-funded Horizon2020 project which has the aim of developing a roadmap for a European Sample Curation Facility, designed to curate precious samples returned from Solar System exploration missions to asteroids, Mars, the Moon and comets.

Personal life Grady is a practising Catholic. Her youngest sister, Dr Ruth Grady, is a Senior Lecturer in microbiology at the University of Manchester. Grady's husband, Professor Ian Wright, is also a planetary scientist at the Open University. Ian was Principal Investigator of the Ptolemy instrument on the Philae lander, part of ESA's Rosetta spacecraft. Ian and Monica have one son, Jack Wright, who works in the film industry.

Selected bibliography