Cyril Ponnamperuma

Cyril Ponnamperuna was a Sri Lankan scientist known internationally for his work promoting science and researching for distinguished organizations.

Ponnamperuma obtained his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from the University of Madras and his Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the . He then moved to the United States where he pursued his doctorate in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.

After graduation he began working for NASA and was influential with Project Apollo and the Viking and Voyager programs.

Arthur C. Clarke had a great respect for Ponnamperuma and he was eventually named as the first director of the Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies. Among his other honors, he was the vice president of the Third World Academy of Sciences, a distinguished lecturer at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a professor with the Atomic Energy Commission of India.

He served the University of Maryland, Baltimore as a chemistry professor and director of the lab of chemical evolution and became the science advisor to the Sri Lankan president in 1984. He suffered a heart attack in his lab at the University of Maryland and passed away in December of 1994.