1. Becky Smethurst 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.
11 Facts About Becky Smethurst
1. 2.
Becky Smethurst is a member of the Galaxy Zoo collaboration, run by her doctoral advisor, Chris Lintott.
3.
Becky Smethurst has written two popular science books, titled Space: 10 Things You Should Know and A Brief History of Black Holes.
4.
Becky Smethurst received a first-class master's degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Durham in 2012.
5.
Becky Smethurst earned her doctorate in 2017 with a thesis titled "The influence of morphology, AGN and environment on the quenching histories of galaxies".
6.
Becky Smethurst was an Ogden Trust Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham before returning to the University of Oxford in late 2018 as a junior research fellow.
7.
Becky Smethurst's research involves using statistical methods to analyse large datasets of galaxies obtained through Galaxy Zoo and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, including the development of several open-source software programs for analytics of large astronomy data sets.
8.
Becky Smethurst won the 2020 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship, an award given by the Herschel Society through the Royal Astronomical Society, with the goal of "supporting promising female astronomers early in their careers".
9.
Becky Smethurst began creating science communication videos when she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nottingham for the Sixty Symbols YouTube channel, run by Brady Haran and the university's physics department.
10.
Becky Smethurst has appeared on Deep Sky Videos, another channel operated by Haran on the theme of astronomy.
11.
Becky Smethurst has published a book, titled Space: 10 Things You Should Know, which was named one of Sky at Night Magazine's 23 best space and astronomy books of 2019.