Dr Becky Smethurst

Dr Becky Smethurst is an award-winning astrophysicist and science communicator.

She is based at the University of Oxford, where her specialism is in how galaxies evolve together with their supermassive black holes. In 2022, she was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Research Fellowship.

Her YouTube channel, Dr Becky, has over 800,000 subscribers and engages 2 million viewers each month with her videos on weird objects in space, the history of science and monthly recaps of space news. Her social media channels bring science to the general public in an engaging way.

With science journalist Izzie Clarke, Becky presents The Supermassive Podcast in association with the Royal Astronomical Society. It is the number one astronomy podcast in the UK, receiving tens of thousands of listens every month.

She regularly appears on national television and radio to explain the latest space news stories and has featured as an expert on the BBC’s The Sky at Night. Her critically acclaimed book, A Brief History of Black Holes, reached number 27 on Amazon’s worldwide book charts.

Photo credit: Angel Li. 

Suggested talk:

It’s not easy growing a supermassive black hole

How in the universe do supermassive black holes get so big? Dr Becky Smethurst challenges some of the common misconceptions about black holes and explains her cutting-edge science to understand how these mysterious objects actually grow. Along the way, she revisits some iconic pop culture mentions of black holes and wormholes to reveal how scientifically accurate they really are.

A Brief History of Black Holes

Based around her best-selling book, in this talk Becky explores the impact of five hundred years of scientific breakthroughs in astronomy and astrophysics, including the impact on the development of now everyday devices such as the digital cameras on our phones and the WiFi in our homes.