June 13, 2021, 10:10 a.m.

(The Guardian) Renowned astrophysicist Prof Catherine Heymans aims to make her white male-dominated field more widely accessible“I’m always shocked that it’s 2021 and we’re still having ‘first female’ stories,” says Prof Catherine Heymans. Nevertheless, it is an unavoidable fact that, after her appointment two weeks ago, the renowned astrophysicist is not only the first female astronomer royal for Scotland but the only woman to have held any of the astronomer royal positions in the UK.“It’s very hard to aspire to be something if you can’t see someone who looks like you in that job,” she says, recalling that she did not encounter her first female physics lecturer, her mentor Katherine Blundell, until she began her PhD. Continue reading...

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