simply to exist is to be damned/address my soul

In order to be considered for the title of Mother of/Father [scientific field], you have to be the first to make significant contribution in that field. You're setting the groundwork in a way nobody else has. This can obviously cause a lot of debate in the end about who gets the title! That said, I think given the leaps and bounds that Grace makes in several fields of science that take them from the more theoretical to the practical gives him some notable options with strong arguments. So we've got options like: Father of Astrobiology (the discovery and study of Astrophage, Taumoeba, several other forms of life on Adrian, and the study of and first interactions with the Eridians; disproving the Goldilocks zone as the only area viable for life; making significant strides in proving the panspermia hypothesis), Father of Xenolinguistics (first person to create working translator and archive of an alien language), and Father of Interstellar Travel (this would be a title held alongside Dr. Dmitri Komorov, likely with Komorov being listed first, and there would be significant debate on if Grace should hold the title at all. I like to think Dmitri would want to share it though).

All workable cases, all real options. Buuuuut I think my very favorite option though would be the one that is the least open to debate and is the one that I honestly think Grace himself would like best: Father of First Contact.

Because on the one hand, yeah, that's a lot he was mostly doing. First contact with Astrophage, with the Taumoeba, with other life on Adrian, and most of all with the Eridians. The first ever intelligent form of life outside of Earth, he made First Contact with. He found ways to communicate, to establish common ground, to work alongside an alien being. He did something no one else on Earth had ever done before and changed the world with it. He made First Contact and saved the world.

securitycapecreature

1- father of first contact is the cutest option and if you can only have one title that would be best

BUT

2- the funniest opinion imo is him getting several of those so hes one of those "this guy is fuckin everywhere" scientists (i imagine one day in the distant future a group of college kids get together and one of them can be talking about learning of this great biologist that made so many new discoveries and someone else goes "you mean the linguist??" "You mean the ASTRONAUT??" And everyones confused for a little bit until they figure it out)

mercifulmother

2 - This is the ideal vision yes yes yes yes! Grace really went out there and decided to do a 100% speedrun on revolutionizing different fields of science, and now children of the future are going to suffer about it forever. It gets even worse once the political science kids get involved in the conversation. "Do you mean the DIPLOMAT?" STEM vs Humanities showdown is brutal. Trying to write a paper about this man is an absolute nightmare because the interdisciplinary sources on him are in five different sections of the library at any given point. Finding his stuff in a bookstore is even worse.

securitycapecreature

@mercifulmother Ahhhh!!! Yesss oh my those poor kids, im half glad i dont live in that universe rn, his Wikipedia page is the stuff of nightmares

On the other hand, someone does that type of post where they post a screenshot of the "subjects" in a weird wiki page with no context and everyone in the comments identifies him Immediately cause who else

mercifulmother

That's his family forever! He's their family forever! He taught them all how to make first contact, how to be with another species, how to love in this totally new way, and that makes them his kids! He's the blueprint humanity learns from! He never stops teaching, and all his students are his kids, and now they're his family too! Augh I'm gonna go get some tissues now, I'm very emotional.