Becky Smethurst

Who is this?

Rebecca Smethurst, also known as Dr. Becky, is a British astrophysicist, author, and YouTuber who is a Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She was the recipient of the 2020 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship, awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society, as well as the 2020 Mary Somerville Medal and Prize, awarded by the Institute of Physics. In 2022, she won the Royal Astronomical Society's Winton Award "for research by a post-doctoral fellow in Astronomy whose career has shown the most promising development". As a researcher, Smethurst studies the role that supermassive black holes play in inhibiting different types of galaxies from forming stars. She is a member of the Galaxy Zoo collaboration, run by her doctoral advisor, Chris Lintott. Smethurst hosts her own YouTube channel, called Dr. Becky, where she posts science communication videos related to astronomy research and amateur astronomy. She has also written two popular science books, titled Space: 10 Things You Should Know and A Brief History of Black Holes.

Career

1. 1990
   Born

Trivia

• •Place of birth: Lancashire
• •Citizenship: United Kingdom
• •Known as: astrophysicist, YouTuber, scientist