Maggie Aderin’s dream: To walk in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong

Maggie Aderin grew up watching Star Trekdreams of one day traveling into space. Today, she has not made it into orbit, but she is one of Britain’s best-known scientists, an award-winning astronomer and broadcaster who has worked on the James Webb and Gemini telescopes. She talked to New Scientist’s The world, the universe and us podcast about writing her autobiography Starchild: My Life Under the Night Skyand how she got to where she is today.

Rowan Hooper: Maggie, you’re the host The sky at nightyou have been president of the British Science Association and are a general science teacher. You have also had a huge impact over the years speaking to tens of thousands of children. Reading Star childit felt like a huge outreach because you’re actually saying, “Look, I did this, and you can too.” Is that part of the motivation behind it?

Maggie Aderin: It is. I always say reach for the stars, whatever your stars are. As a child I used to watch Clangers and Star Trekand indeed, both physically and metaphorically, I reach for the stars. I want to get out there and that has been the driving force in my life. And I think because I’ve had this big crazy dream—I haven’t been in space, and I may never be—but just by having the dream, it’s allowed me to do things I never thought possible. That’s what I like to say to everyone I talk to, so doing it as a book seemed like a great opportunity.

There are many things that stood out to 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 realize that it didn’t happen to other people. It’s because my parents broke up when I was quite young, so it was an ongoing custody (problem), swinging from one to the other.

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

My father saw the power of education. And luckily, I saw the power in that too. He had immigrated from Nigeria and he felt that Britain 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 it was drummed into us from a very early age. For me, I felt a bit of a failure. When I started the education system, because I had undiagnosed dyslexia, I was put at the back of the class with the safety scissors and glue. So I felt that education was the key and yet I didn’t do very well.

You also write about how you remember making your own telescopes when you were a teenager, and you’ve been working on the Gemini telescope today. You went to university, but you were the only black woman in your physics class. Now a Barbie doll has been created in your image. This thread runs through the book, from the things you did when you were younger to what you do 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 years old, so I had to get special permission from my teachers and also from my father to actually attend class.

Tell us about your love for the moon, because it also comes out in the book.

I am known in my family as a self-certified lunatic. Self-certification is important! My father used to tell me about how the moon was his friend because he grew up in Nigeria and it was about a 12-mile bike ride from his home to his school. When it was dark, the moon would guide his path because the roads were unlit. Growing up in inner 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 want to walk and walk next to Neil Armstrong’s footsteps.

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

I used to see them as a child (and) I always wanted to get into the theater for the Christmas performances. It took me 57 years, but I did it. We started locally (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 we went out and looked at exoplanets and looked for biosignatures. When I was at university we talked about the possibility that exoplanets could be out there. Now we can not only detect the exoplanets, but we can actually analyze their atmospheres using spectroscopy.

Were you involved in that on the James Webb Space Telescope?

Yes, (with) a near-infrared spectrometer. The James Webb Space Telescope is looking at heat energy, infrared energy, and it’s transforming our knowledge just like the Hubble Space Telescope did. (Hubble) gave us a new understanding of the universe, but raised many questions. James Webb is the next iteration in the quest to understand the universe, but with infrared light.

When you give talks in schools, what is it that you tell the children 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 I have dyslexia and ADHD so I can’t spell, I’m often late with things. It’s all part of my neurodiversity and yet I reach for the stars and it’s enabled me to do things I didn’t think were possible. So you don’t have to think, “I have to be perfect to achieve things.” You can be imperfect and still do things. I always say that each and every one of us has something inside of us that burns brightly. When we get out into the world and share it, 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 graduated?

I hope so. It is very difficult for me to measure. When you go through the system, you enter a more rarefied atmosphere and therefore you are less likely to have that kind of interaction, although it still happens occasionally. I think society has changed and it’s moving in the right direction, but it’s not there yet. And that is the challenge.

Sometimes people feel like I’m the only woman in the room, or the only black person in the room, and that puts me under pressure. But now I like to turn things around. I see another way of being the only (black woman) in the room, that the burden is not on me, that they need us in the room because science thrives on diversity when many different ideas come together. If you have a monotonous group of people, they all think the same way. You don’t get the groundbreaking leaps in technology and understanding.

I was wondering, over the course of your career, whether you’ve seen an increase in distrust of science—or whether astronomy has been immune to it?

I think there’s a mistrust of experts, sort of: “What are you selling?” Most of the work I’ve done is Earth observation – satellites that look at our planet and help us understand climate change. I would give talks about climate change and (people would say), “Oh, well, you scientists are just saying that to get your funding.” There was a perception that we invented things to ensure that we had jobs.

In astronomy, I think we transcend that because astronomy is the search for knowledge. To me it is like poetry and art, and it gives life to 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 out and look up because it surpasses our global problems.” They don’t go away. But having the bigger perspective really helps.

This is an edited version of an interview on the New Scientist podcast