Susan McKenna Lawlor, Astrophysicist

Astrophysics applies the laws of physics and chemistry to explain the birth, life and death of stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae and other objects in the universe. Astrophysicists study the fun stuff: the properties of dark matter, dark energy and black holes, and whether time travel is possible or wormholes can form.

Women account for just 10-15% of astrophysicists globally, but a trailblazer is Irishwoman Jocelyn Bell Burnell. As a research student in Cambridge in 1967, she detected unusual radio pulses coming from outside the solar system and identified them as emanating from rapidly spinning, super-dense, collapsed stars, subsequently named ‘pulsars’. One of the most significant astronomical discoveries of the 20th century, it won her (male) Cambridge superiors the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics. Bell Burnell wasn’t cited – she featured on Scientific American’s 2008 list of ‘Top 10 Nobel Snubs’ - but her other international awards, including a DBE, are substantial.

Susan McKenna Lawlor is another role model: in 1985 she set up Space Technology Ireland (STIL), a high-tech company building instrumentation and subsystems for space missions. STIL designed the onboard electrical support system processor unit for the Rosetta spacecraft, which in 2004 performed the first successful landing on a comet.

Photo: Beta Bajgart