Chris Aikman spent most of his career (from 1968 to 1997) as an astrophysicist at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. His initial research was on the spectroscopy of chemically peculiar stars, whose surface compositions differ markedly from that of the Sun, with the aim of understanding the origin of their anomalies. From 1991, he conducted a program of tracking Earth approaching asteroids with the historic telescope built by John S. Plaskett,
but the project was cancelled in 1997. He was the Canadian representative on the Spaceguard Foundation, a group concerned with assessing the asteroid impact threat to Earth. An incidental product of this research was the discovery of three asteroids (of the hundred thousand now catalogued by the Minor Planet Center). These three minor planets are now designated as (7840) Hendrika, (10870) Gwendolen and (24899) Dominiona.
