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

Maggie Aderin grew up watching Star Trekhe dreams of one day flying into space. She didn’t make it into orbit today, but she’s one of Britain’s best-known scientists, an award-winning astronomer and broadcaster who worked on the James Webb and Gemini telescopes. She spoke with 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 Sky At Nightyou’ve been president of the British Science Association and you’re generally a science educator. You’ve also had a huge impact over the years, speaking to tens of thousands of children. Reading Star childit felt like a great outreach because you’re actually saying, “Look, I did it and so did you.” Is the exhortation part behind it?

Maggie Aderin: It is. I always say reach for the stars, no matter what your stars are. As a child I watched Clangers and Star Trekand actually, physically and metaphorically, I reach for the stars. I want to get there and it is the driving force of my life. And I think because I had this big crazy dream—I wasn’t in space and maybe I never will—but just having that dream allowed me to do things that I never thought were possible. I like to say that to everyone I talk to, so doing it as a book felt like a great opportunity.

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

It’s actually funny because I didn’t actually realize that it didn’t happen to other people. This is because my parents split up when I was quite young, so there was custody [issue]swinging from one to the other.

And when you were 4, your dad asked you what oxbridge university you were going to?

My father saw the power in education. And luckily, I also saw strength in that. He immigrated from Nigeria and felt that the UK was quite hostile when he came here in the late 1960s.

He had four daughters and really wanted us to survive and thrive, so education was forced into us from an early age. For me, I felt a bit of a failure. When I started the education system, because I had undiagnosed dyslexia, I was placed at the back of the classroom with safety scissors and glue. And so I felt that education was the key and yet I was failing at it.

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Here’s another crazy dream: I want to go and follow in Neil Armstrong’s footsteps
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You also write about how you remember making your own telescopes when you were a teenager, and today you were working on the Gemini telescope. You went to university, but you were the only black girl in your physics class. Now here 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 kind of fits together. Like a telescope.

Yes. The pieces come together. I made my own telescope because I listened Sky At Night and Patrick Moore would say, “You can see it with binoculars.” So I bought binoculars. 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 as well as my father to actually attend class.

Tell us about your love for the moon, because that also comes through in the book.

I’m known as a freak in my family. Self-certification is important! My father used to tell me how the moon was his friend because he was brought up in Nigeria and it was about 12 miles by bike from his home to school. When it was dark, the moon guided him because the roads were unlit. Then when you grow up in inner London, you often don’t see the stars that clearly, but the moon shines through. So the moon was my father’s friend and he was my friend too. Here’s another crazy dream: I want to go and follow in Neil Armstrong’s footsteps.

Last year you presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures and one of the topics was, is there life beyond Earth? what do you think about it?

I watched them as a kid [and] I always wanted to get to the theater for Christmas lectures. 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 live here? Then we looked at our solar system, then we went out and looked at exoplanets and looked for biological signatures. When I was at university we talked about the possibility of exoplanets. Now we can not only detect exoplanets, but we can actually analyze their atmospheres using spectroscopy.

Were you involved with the James Webb Space Telescope?

Yes, [with] near infrared spectrometer. The James Webb Space Telescope looks at thermal energy, infrared energy, and transforms our knowledge just like the Hubble Space Telescope. [Hubble] it gave us a new understanding of the universe, but it raised many questions. James Webb is the next iteration in the quest to understand the universe, but with infrared light.

When you speak in schools, what is the most impactful thing you say to children?

One of the things I like to say is that you don’t have to be perfect to be a role model. I tell them I have dyslexia and ADHD so I can’t spell, I’m often late. It’s all part of my neurodiversity, yet I reach for the stars and it’s allowed me to do things I wouldn’t have thought possible. So you don’t have to think “I have to be perfect to achieve something”. You can be imperfect and still get things done. I always say, each 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 what sets your heart on fire.

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Science thrives on diversity. If you have a monotonous group of people, they all think the same way
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In the book, you have stories about being mistaken for a cleaner or a tea shop, that you are generally underestimated. Is it naive of me to ask if it has changed at all since you were a grad?

I hope so. It’s very hard for me to gauge. As you move through the system, you get into a thinner atmosphere, so that kind of interaction is less likely to happen, although it still happens occasionally. I think society has changed and is going in the right direction, but not yet. And that’s 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 pressure on me. But now I like to turn things around. I see I’m the only one [Black woman] in the room in a different way, that the burden is not 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 monotonous group of people, they all think the same way. You will not achieve these revolutionary leaps in technology and understanding.

I’m wondering if you’ve seen an increase in distrust of science during your career – or if 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 – the satellites that monitor our planet and help us understand climate change. I would give interviews on climate change and [people would say]“Well, you scientists only say that to get your funding. The impression was that we were making things up to secure our jobs.

In astronomy, I think we overcome that because astronomy is a quest for knowledge. To me it’s like poetry and art and it revives the spirit. Every culture has looked at the night sky and wondered what’s out there, so I think it’s a continuation. During covid I said, “Go outside and look up because it goes beyond our global problems.” They don’t go away. But having more perspective really helps.

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

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