UK will get first feminine Astronomer Royal in 350 years

Astronomer Prof Michele Dougherty didn’t examine science in secondary college – however was as a substitute impressed to be taught extra about area after utilizing her father’s telescope.

Now she is the primary lady to be appointed the UK’s Astronomer Royal within the put up’s 350-year historical past, and is a part of the crew sending probes to Jupiter’s icy moons.

She advised BBC News she hoped her appointment on Wednesday because the official adviser to King Charles III on astronomical issues would encourage extra ladies and women to check science.

The new Astronomer Royal added that she additionally needed to make use of her new position to “open people’s eyes” to the wonders of area.

“I want to engage with the public, excite them about what we do in astronomy, but also make it clear how important what we do is to the UK economy,” Prof Dougherty mentioned.

Prof Dougherty is concerned in some of the thrilling area missions so far: a European Space Agency probe to the icy moons of Jupiter to evaluate whether or not they have the potential to assist life.

“It would be surprising if there wasn’t life in our solar system,” she mentioned laughing, with the unbridled enthusiasm she is understood for.

Her journey to Jupiter started on the age of 10 and noticed the planet via a telescope she, her sister and her father constructed.

“That was when I got my first view of Jupiter and four large moons, never thinking I’d end up sending instruments on a spacecraft there,” she mentioned.

“I’m having to pinch myself at the thought of it and I’m having to pinch myself at the fact that I’m now Astronomer Royal!”

Prof Dougherty’s achievement is all of the extra exceptional as she didn’t examine science at secondary college in South Africa the place she grew up.

“I had a choice between schools. One of them taught science, but none of my friends were going to it,” she mentioned. “So as a young 13-year-old, I thought, I want to go with my friends.”

But the younger Prof Dougherty was so good at maths that she was admitted to a science course at college.

“The first couple of years were hard. It was like learning a new language,” she mentioned.

But she quickly caught up and got here to the UK to develop into one of many nation’s main area scientists, exhibiting super braveness in addition to expertise.

“I said yes to things I didn’t know how to do, and I learned as I went,” she advised me.

The position of Astronomer Royal dates again to the creation of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1675. John Flamsteed from Derby was the primary particular person to fill the position. The job again then was principally to advise the king on utilizing the celebrities to enhance navigation at sea.

The observatory’s senior curator, Dr Louise Devoy, defined that the job developed over time, to develop into some of the essential scientific voices within the nation.

“By the 1800s the Astronomer Royal started to be called upon to act as a government advisor, so that may be to advise on the railways or bridges or telegraphy, a whole range of topics beyond astronomy,” she mentioned.

“If we fast forward to the 20th Century, it is more about developing international collaborations, which is why you have British astronomers working in telescopes in Chile, the Canary Islands and even the James Webb Space Telescope.”

Over three and a half centuries,15 males have held the put up of essentially the most senior astronomer for all the UK. But on the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Prof Catherine Heyman has held an equal put up as Astronomer Royal for Scotland since 2021.

She was delighted to listen to of Prof Dougherty’s appointment.

“For the last 350 years the title of Astronomer Royal has been held by a white male astronomer, and that kind of reflected what the astronomical community has looked like for the last few centuries. But things are changing,” she mentioned.

“Science is becoming more diverse, which it needs to be if we want to answer these big questions, and I’m absolutely delighted now that the two Astronomers Royal across the UK are female, reflecting the fact that science is for everyone.”

Prof Dougherty herself doesn’t need to make a giant deal of the truth that she is the primary lady to carry the UK-wide put up, however she hopes it can encourage others to observe in her footsteps.

“I think it is important. I think when young children in particular see someone that looks like them doing a job they think they would never get an opportunity to do, it changes their mindset a little,” she advised BBC News.

Prof Dougherty skilled this when she was head of the physics division at Imperial College between 2018 and 2024. During that point, the proportion of first yr feminine undergraduates who got here to Imperial elevated from about 19% to 25%.

“Not a huge change,” she mentioned, “but there was a positive change. And I think it’s because students saw that I was in a role that they might aspire to in the future”.

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