In 1960 he commenced work in Cambridge on his PhD degree under the supervision of Fred Hoyle, and published his first scientific paper "On Graphite Particles as Interstellar Grains” in "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society" in 1962. He was awarded a PhD degree in Mathematics in 1963 and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge in the same year. In the following year he was appointed a Staff Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. Here he continued to work on the nature of interstellar dust, publishing many papers in this field, that led to a consideration of carbon-containing grains as well as the older silicate models.