Maggie Aderin’s dream: To walk by the footprints of Neil Armstrong

Maggie Aderin grew up watching Star Trek, dreaming of one day going into space. Today, she hasn’t made it into orbit, but she is one of the UK’s best-known scientists, an award-winning astronomer and broadcaster who has worked on the James Webb and Gemini telescopes. She spoke to New Scientist’s The World, the Universe and Us podcast about writing her autobiography Starchild: My life under the night sky, and how she got to where she is today.

Rowan Hooper: Maggie, you’re host of The Sky At Night, you’ve been president of the British Science Association and are a science educator in general. You’ve also had a huge impact over the years speaking to tens of thousands of children. Reading Starchild, it felt like a great work of outreach because, effectively, you’re saying, “Look, I did this and so can you.” Is that part of the prompting behind it?

Maggie Aderin: It is. I always say reach for the stars, no matter what your stars are. As a child, I used to watch the Clangers and Star Trek, and actually, both physically and metaphorically, I am reaching for the stars. I want to get out there and it’s been the driving force of my life. And I think because I’ve had this big crazy dream – I haven’t been out in space and I may never do it – but just by having the dream, it’s enabled me to do things I would’ve never thought possible. That’s what I like to say to anyone I speak to, so to do it as a book just seemed like a great opportunity.

There are loads of things that jumped out at me in the book, but, first of all, you went to 13 schools in 12 years?

Actually, it’s funny, because I didn’t really realise that wasn’t happening to other people. It’s because my parents broke up when I was quite young, so there was an ongoing custody [issue], swinging from one to the other.

And when you were 4, your dad asked you which Oxbridge college you were going to go to?

My father saw the power in education. And, fortunately, I saw the power in it, too. He had immigrated from Nigeria and he felt that the UK was quite hostile when he came in, in the late 60s.

He had four daughters and he really wanted us to survive and thrive, and so education was drummed into us from a very early age. For me, I felt a little bit of a failure. When I did start the education system, because I had undiagnosed dyslexia, I was put at the back of the class with the safety scissors and the glue. And so I felt that education was the key and yet I wasn’t doing well at it.

You also write about how you remember making your own telescopes when you were a teenager, and you’ve worked on the Gemini telescope today. You went to university, but you were the only Black woman in your physics class. Now, there is a Barbie doll made in your image. There’s this thread running through the book, from the things you did when you were younger to what you’re doing now. It all sort of fits together. Like a telescope.

Yes. The pieces come together. I made my own telescope because I used to listen to The Sky At Night and Patrick Moore would say, “With a telescope, you can see this.” So, I bought a telescope. It wasn’t very good. Then I discovered in an adult-education magazine that you can make your own telescope. I was only 14, so I had to get special permission from my teachers and also from my father to actually attend the class.

Tell us about your love of the moon, because that comes through in the book as well.

I’m known in my family as a self-certified lunatic. The self-certification is important! My father used to tell me about how the moon was his friend because he was brought up in Nigeria and it was about a 12-mile cycle ride from his home to his school. When it was dark, the moon would guide his way because the roads were unlit. Then, growing up in inner-city London, you don’t often see the stars that clearly, but the moon shines through. So, the moon was my father’s friend, and it was my friend, too. Here’s another crazy dream: I do want to go and walk next to the footsteps of Neil Armstrong.

You presented the Royal Institution Christmas lectures last year and one of the topics was, is there life beyond Earth? What are your thoughts on that?

I used to watch them as a child [and] I always wanted to get into the theatre for the Christmas lectures. It took me 57 years, but I made it. We started local [in my lectures], so we looked at our planet. What does it mean to have life here? Then we looked at our solar system, then went out beyond and looked at exoplanets and looking for biosignatures. When I was at university, we talked about the possibility of exoplanets being out there. Now, not only can we detect the exoplanets, but we can actually analyse their atmospheres using spectroscopy.

You were involved in that on the James Webb Space Telescope?

Yes, [with] a near-infrared spectrometer. The James Webb Space Telescope looks at heat energy, infrared energy, and it’s transforming our knowledge just as the Hubble Space Telescope did. [Hubble] gave us a new understanding of the universe, but flagged up many questions. The James Webb is the next iteration in trying to understand the universe, but with infrared light.

When you give talks in schools, what’s something you tell the kids that has the biggest impact?

One of the things I like to say is that to be a role model, you don’t have to be perfect. I tell them that I have dyslexia and ADHD, so I can’t spell, I’m often late for things. It’s all part of my neurodiversity, and yet I am reaching for the stars and it enabled me to do things which I wouldn’t have thought possible. So you don’t have to think, “I have to be perfect to achieve stuff.” You can be imperfect and still do things. I always say, every one of us has something inside us that’s burning bright. When we get out into the world and share that, that’s what makes the world a better place. But the key in life is to find out what sets your heart on fire.

You have stories in the book about being mistaken for a cleaner or a tea lady, being underestimated in general. Is it naive of me to ask if this has changed at all since you were a postgraduate?

I hope so. It’s very hard for me to gauge. As you go through the system, you get into a more rarefied atmosphere and so are less likely to have that sort of interaction, although it still does happen occasionally. I think society has changed and it’s moving in the right direction, but it’s not there yet. And so that is the challenge.

Sometimes people feel I’m the only woman in the room, or the only Black person in the room, and so that puts me under pressure. But now I like to flip things. I’m seeing being the only [Black woman] in the room in another way, that the onus isn’t on me, that they need us in the room because science thrives on diversity when lots of different ideas come together. If you have a monotonic group of people, they all think in the same way. You don’t get those groundbreaking leaps in technology and in understanding.

I wondered, over your career, if you’ve seen a rise in mistrust in science – or if astronomy has been immune to that?

I think there is a distrust of experts, sort of: “What are you selling?” Most of the work I’ve done is Earth observation – satellites that are looking at our planet and helping us understand climate change. I’d give talks on climate change and [people would say], “Oh, well, you scientists are just saying that to get your funding.” There was a perception that we were making things up in order to ensure we had jobs.

In astronomy, I think we transcend that because astronomy is the quest for knowledge. To me, it’s like poetry and art, and it enlivens the spirit. Every culture has looked up at the night sky and wondered what’s out there, so I think it’s a continuation of that. During covid, I used to say, “Get outside and look up because it transcends our global issues.” They don’t go away. But having that bigger perspective really helps.

This is an edited version of an interview on New Scientist’s podcast