Australian physicist Ruby Payne-Scott helped lay the groundwork for a whole new kind of astronomy: radio astronomy. By scanning the skies for radio waves instead of the light waves that we can see with our eyes, Payne-Scott and her colleagues opened a new window into the universe and transformed the way we explore it. But to keep her job as a woman working for the Australian government in the 1940s, Payne-Scott had to keep a pretty big secret.
Guests
W. Miller Goss, astronomer and author of Making Waves: The Story of Ruby Payne-Scott: Australian Pioneer Radio Astronomer
Sharon Bell, anthropologist and ANU Professor Emerita who specialises in women in science in Australia
Elizabeth Mahony, radio astronomer working at CSIRO
Fiona Hall, prominent Australian artist and Ruby Payne-Scott’s daughter
Brian Schmidt, astrophysicist who won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics