MacDermott and Penny. Portrait of the chemist Alexandra MacDermott and the astrophysicist Alan Penny seen in front of an infrared image of a celestial object. These scientists are working on the Darwin-Mark project to look for signs of life on Earth-sized planets. Alan Penny is in charge of an infrared interferometer space telescope to detect oxygen. MacDermott is working on the second telescope which will look for molecules orientated the same way as living organisms. She is at Cambridge University in England. Penny works at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, England. Photographed in 1997.