Becky Smethurst Audiobooks

Oxford astrophysics in plain words, via Dr Becky and A Brief History of Black Holes

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Who is Becky Smethurst?

Becky Smethurst – Dr Becky to her YouTube audience – is a British astrophysicist, author and science communicator, and a Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her research asks one of the bigger questions in modern astronomy: what role supermassive black holes play in stopping different kinds of galaxies from forming stars. She works within the Galaxy Zoo collaboration, run by her doctoral supervisor Chris Lintott.

The recognition has come quickly. In 2020 she received both the Royal Astronomical Society’s Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship and the Institute of Physics’ Mary Somerville Medal and Prize; in 2022 the Royal Astronomical Society added its Winton Award, which recognises the most promising career development among post-doctoral researchers in astronomy. Alongside the day job she has built her Dr Becky YouTube channel into a home for accessible astronomy, and written two popular science books: Space: 10 Things You Should Know and A Brief History of Black Holes.

Becky Smethurst in audiobooks

A Brief History of Black Holes is the Smethurst title in our catalogue, and it plays to every strength the format has. She is a working researcher who explains for a living, on camera as Dr Becky, and that fluency translates directly to audio: the feeling of being talked through the strangest objects in the universe by someone who actually studies them, rather than lectured from a script.

For UK listeners this is popular science at its most reassuringly grounded. The subject could hardly be grander – black holes, galaxies and the machinery that switches star formation off – but the telling is built for the ear, from a British scientist whose day job is asking these questions at Oxford. Listeners who enjoy it will find she has a second book beyond our current catalogue.