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Colin Pillinger
Colin Pillinger with a model of Beagle 2 at the Lander Operations Planning Centre in Milton Keynes, 2003. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images
Colin Pillinger with a model of Beagle 2 at the Lander Operations Planning Centre in Milton Keynes, 2003. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Colin Pillinger remembered by Monica Grady

This article is more than 9 years old

9 May 1943–7 May 2014
An Open University colleague of the space scientist pays tribute to his inspirational work and offbeat style

I first met Colin Pillinger in July 1979. I arrived at the department of mineralogy and petrology in Cambridge, fearful and trembling, for my interview with him to assess my suitability to do a PhD. But he didn’t seem to be in his office. There instead was what I can only describe as an escaped hippy – long-haired, bearded, wearing striped trousers and a particularly unforgettable hand-knitted bright purple tanktop. I think I could be forgiven for not realising that this vision of not quite sartorial elegance was the Dr Pillinger who was to interview me. And so began an association that lasted for more than 30 years.

Colin mentored me through my PhD and my early postdoctoral career. He kept a benevolent eye on me over the years and enjoyed the humour of the situation when I returned to the Open University and became his head of department and boss. Over the years I fought with Colin, shouted at Colin, he shouted at me. We worked closely together and by turns he inspired and irritated me, mainly because so often he was correct!

Colin’s research career had really taken off with his study of the samples collected from the Moon by the Apollo astronauts. When I first knew him though, he had just started to work on meteorites and was developing an interest in comets. He is most generally remembered for his Beagle 2 spacecraft but there was so much more to his scientific legacy than that: the work on interstellar grains, on volatiles in terrestrial materials, on iron meteorites and a whole range of other samples is a matter of record.

Colin’s lasting legacy, though, is more valuable than Beagle 2 or his specific research. His legacy is the people he trained, inspired and was friends with. More than 50 PhD students and a similar number of postdoctoral researchers came and went through Colin’s research group at Bristol, Cambridge and then, for the bulk of his career, at the Open University in Milton Keynes. These researchers are scattered over the globe and when we put together a book of condolence for Colin’s family, the number and nature of the contributions were immense.

The recent excitement of Philae’s landing on a comet was, for me, tempered by memories of Colin. In January when Rosetta “woke up” Colin had hosted an event at the OU to celebrate the next hurdle overcome in a mission that he had worked so hard to make happen. For him not to be present at the culmination of this mission was a sorrow.

Colin was a big character and though he was slowed down by the multiple sclerosis he developed later in life, it did not diminish him. He was my academic father and I miss him.

Monica Grady is professor in planetary sciences at the Open University

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