A pioneering British scientist who was leading studies in Antarctica to understand the likelihood of life existing on Mars and elsewhere has been killed in a car accident. Dr David Wynn-Williams died after he was involved in a crash involving two vehicles near his home in Cambridge. He was the Antarctic astrobiology project leader at the British Antarctic Survey and studied the way microbes survive in harsh conditions as a model for how life might exist on other planets. He was jogging when the crash happened.