As her book of essays by female astronomers is published, the veteran scientist reflects on her career as an astronomy prodigy, the face of the Twilight Zone and Richard Feynman’s life model
Virginia Trimble, 78, is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, whose astronomy career spans more than 50 years. She has studied the structure and evolution of stars, galaxies and the universe and published more than 1,000 works, including research papers in astronomy, astrophysics, the history of science and scientometrics – the field concerned with measuring scientific outputs – as well book reviews and biographies. She has co-edited The Sky Is for Everyone, a new collection of 37 autobiographical essays by distinguished female astronomers, including herself. Spanning a range of generations and nationalities, each tells of the barriers they have overcome to change the face of modern astronomy.
What got you into astronomy?
It wasn’t a love of stars: I grew up in Los Angeles very nearsighted and never saw the night sky. I really wanted to be an Egyptologist, but the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA] didn’t have an archaeology major. My father looked at the catalogue and saw astronomy. I enrolled in an astronomy-math double degree but that got moved to the school of engineering, which wasn’t terribly welcoming to women, so I switched to astronomy-physics. I started at UCLA in 1961 in the gifted students’ programme.
