Cyril A. Ponnamperuma, an internationally recognized theoretician on the origins of life and professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Maryland College Park, died Tuesday of a heart attack at Washington Adventist Hospital. He was 71.
He retired from teaching this year but continued as director of the Laboratory of Chemical Evolution, which he had founded when he arrived at UM in 1971.
In November, he was appointed director of the North-South Center For Sustainable Life Development at UM, which studies and supports development of Third World nations.
He spent more than 30 years attempting to solve the riddle of the spontaneous creation of life on Earth.
He also promoted the idea that there was other life in the universe and said in a 1983 interview in The Sun, "We shouldn't be surprised if we land on another planet one day and someone reaches out to shake your hand."
Also that year, in what he called "the greatest find of my life," he and a team of UM scientists discovered a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite in Australia that contained the five chemicals that combine to form desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), which make up the genetic material that can result in human life. It was the first time such life-building molecules had been found in the same material.
"We have found the precursors of life, and with this our expectations of life in the universe has gotten a tremendous boost," he said at the time.
He explained that the discovery did not indicate what kind of life was in the universe, yet scoffed at those who did not believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
To critics, he said, "The big question is 'Are we alone?,' and this discovery, and the belief that we are not alone, gives a feeling of the grandeur of the universe."
Aware of his place in the vast universe and advising his students of theirs, he said, "I always tell my Chem 107 students while I'm teaching Chem 107, there may be another professor teaching Chem 107 in the Andromeda galaxy."
In 1963, Dr. Ponnamperuma joined the Exobiology Divison of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and was named chief of the chemical evolution branch with responsibility for organic analysis. He was assigned to the Apollo, Viking and Voyager programs.
A native of Sri Lanka, he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1959 from Birkbeck College, University of London, and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962.
He wrote more than 400 articles on chemical evolution and the origins of life, and wrote or edited 16 books.
He was awarded the first Harold Urey Prize by the Russian Academy of Creative Arts in 1993 and in October was named by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
In 1991, the French government conferred on him the title of Chevalier de Lettres des Artes, and UM awarded him its first Distinguished International Science Award.
Dr. Ponnamperuma was director of the Institute of Fundamental Studies in Sri Lanka from 1984 to 1991 and the Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies, also in Sri Lanka, from 1985 to 1987.
In a broadcast Thursday on Sri Lankan radio, Arthur C. Clarke, author of "2001: A Space Odyssey," and "2010: Odyssey Two," said, "His death is a great blow to the whole world. He was not only one of [Sri Lanka's] most distinguished sons, but undoubtedly the Sri Lankan scholar best known to the scientific community at large. . . . Hundreds of people of many nations -- by no means all of them scientists -- will miss his warm and compassionate personality."
Dr. Ponnamperuma, a resident of Washington, is survived by his wife, Valli, and a daughter Roshini.
Arrangements for a memorial service at UM were incomplete.