was perhaps the only prominent Steady-State supporter to switch sides (Hoyle continued to work on modifications of steady-state for the rest of his life, while Bondi and Gold moved away from cosmology during the 1960s). During his last years, Sciama became interested in the issue of dark matter in galaxies. Among other aspects he pursued a theory of dark matter that consists of a heavy neutrino, certainly disfavored in his realization, but still possible in a more complicated scenario. Doctoral students Several leading astrophysicists and cosmologists of the modern era completed their doctorates under Sciama's supervision, notably: George Ellis (1964) Stephen Hawking (1966) Brandon Carter (1967) Martin Rees (1967) Gary Gibbons (1973) James Binney (1975) John D. Barrow (1977) Philip Candelas (1977) David Deutsch (1978) Adrian Melott (1981) Antony Valentini (1992) Sciama also strongly influenced Roger Penrose, who dedicated his The Road to Reality to Sciama's memory. The 1960s group he led in Cambridge (which included Ellis, Hawking, Rees, and Carter), has proved of lasting influence. Publications Short (104 pages) and clearly written non-mathematical book on the physical and conceptual foundations of General Relativity. Could be read with profit by physics students before immersing themselves in more technical studies of General Relativity. Awards and honours Sciama was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983. He was also an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Academia Lincei of Rome. He served as president of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation, 1980–84. His work at SISSA and the University of Oxford led to the creation of a lecture series in his honour, the Dennis Sciama Memorial Lectures. In 2009, the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth elected to name their new building, and their supercomputer in 2011, in his honour. Sciama has been portrayed in a number of biographical projects about his most famous student, Stephen Hawking. In the 2004 BBC TV movie Hawking, Sciama was played by John Sessions. In the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, Sciama was played by David Thewlis; physicist Adrian Melott strongly criticized the portrayal of Sciama in the film. Personal life Sciama was of Jewish-Syrian descent and an avowed atheist. In 1959, Sciama married Lidia Dina, a social anthropologist, who survived him, along with their two daughters. References External links 1926 births 1999 deaths 20th-century atheists