Monica Grady is Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at the Open University in Milton Keynes.

Prior to that, she was Head of the Meteorites and Cosmic Mineralogy Division in the Department of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, and Honorary Professor of Meteoritics at University College London. Monica received an honours degree in Chemistry and Geology from the University of Durham in 1979, then went on to complete a Ph.D. on carbon in stony meteorites at the University of Cambridge in 1982. Since then, Monica has continued to specialise in the study of meteorites, and carried out this research at Cambridge, then for eight years at the Open University in Milton Keynes, prior to joining the Natural History Museum in 1991.

Her particular research interests are in the fields of carbon and nitrogen stable isotope geochemistry of primitive meteorites and of martian meteorites, interstellar components in meteorites, micrometeorites, and also in astrobiology and the possibilities of life elsewhere in the cosmos. Asteroid (4731) was named ‘Monicagrady’ in her honour.

In 2003, Monica gave the Royal Institution Christmas lectures on the theme ‘Voyage in Space and Time’. Between 2005 and 2007 Monica was a member of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Council’s Science Committee.