Dr. John Billingham, BM BCh, (March 18, 1930 – August 4, 2013) was a British Physician and later director of the SETI Program Office and Director of the Life Sciences Division at the NASA Ames Research Center in the USA.
After retiring from NASA he became a Trustee of the SETI Institute Board of Directors.
He gained a BM BCh degree from Oxford and Guy's Hospital, London (which is equivalent to an M.D.
He served as a medical officer with the Royal Air Force (RAF) for seven years, rising to the rank of Squadron Leader (equivalent to Major in the USAF).
In 1963, he was invited to join NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where he headed the Environmental Physiology Branch, and worked on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.