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You鈥檙e a black kid in Mississippi, hanging with the cool kids and dropping in and out of school. But you鈥檙e smart and get noticed by an elite university trying to expunge its racist past. Fast forward, and Hakeem Oluseyi is one of only a handful of black astrophysicists. But he has a plan to change things, as he tells Liz Else

You鈥檝e got a plan to democratise astronomy. Can you tell me about it?
One way is the One Telescope project, to be launched next month. We aim to put one research telescope in every country, starting with African and southern hemisphere nations. There are 54 African countries but only three with telescopes: South Africa, Egypt and Namibia. Nigeria, by the way, has produced as many black astronomers as the US. Elsewhere in Africa, people have tried to popularise astronomy for years, but they are not doing the science.

Is it just lack of cash that is holding astronomy back in these countries?
It is, but two things have changed. First, as we鈥檝e studied the universe, we鈥檝e wanted to look deeper so we made telescopes bigger and bigger. As a result, the best telescopes are too sensitive to look at bright objects such as the nearby stars.

Secondly, there is now an amazing opportunity for small telescopes to discover and characterise new planetary systems, as well as measure the structure of the Milky Way. Astronomers are no longer looking at high-definition pictures but at HD movies, scanning for objects that change and for transient ones. A 4-inch [10-centimetre]telescope was used to discover the first exoplanet by the transit method, where you watch the brightness vary.

Are these tiny telescopes expensive?
They are a lot cheaper than people think: a 1-metre telescope costs $300,000. Reduce the size by 60 per cent, and it falls to just $30,000. I鈥檓 working with an exoplanet discovery team for a survey called KELT, Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope, and there are the and 鈥� all small telescopes, capturing the same part of the sky every night. Bring them together and you have a movie. Once a potential discovery is made, though, you must follow up to confirm and characterise it. We鈥檙e finding exoplanet candidates at such a rate, we need to bump up what we鈥檙e doing.

Where should we put these telescopes that follow-up on initial observations?
There are far fewer telescopes in the southern hemisphere compared to the north, yet the southern skies are really dark. Folk have come up with the idea of a global telescope network before but they think conservatively 鈥� they put telescopes in places where they have friends. It鈥檚 science first, convenience first. I say put the people first.

Why? Surely science should come first?
Why do we do science? What鈥檚 the value? I have a different answer. A scientific education transforms a person鈥檚 life. In the case of astronomy, when we put the science first, great science gets done but people get left out. If we put people first, great science will still get done but we will advance knowledge and education locally. We can do good science and change lives. I know this because of what happened to me.

Tell me more about your early life鈥�
My father dropped out of school aged 9. Almost nobody in my community went to college and certainly didn鈥檛 go into graduate education, or into sciences. Through much luck, and much hard work, I ended up getting accepted for graduate studies at Stanford University after attending Tougaloo College, a small, historically black, college in Mississippi.

What was your upbringing like?
I grew up in a very crazy way. We moved every year between tough neighbourhoods in Houston, New Orleans, Los Angeles and rural Mississippi. I didn鈥檛 play outside a lot because as the perpetual new kid I had to fight to establish myself in the pecking order. In our home, we had two books 鈥� the set of World Book encyclopaedias and the Bible. By 10, I鈥檇 read both from cover to cover. In the encyclopaedias, I discovered Albert Einstein and relativity. I loved the fact that time slows when you move faster. My mother dropped out of school at 16, but she was fully supportive of me. I鈥檇 come home and on the table would be library books she got for me.

How did life start to change?
I had been using my girlfriend鈥檚 computer 鈥� the kind you hook up to a television. There was a little booklet that taught you basic BASIC. I would make it print my name 100 times in a row. I thought it was so cool. When some guys invited us kids to take part in a science fair, I thought, I鈥檒l do the relativity equations on the computer. I won first place in physics in the Mississippi State Science Fair. At that time, I lived in rural Mississippi where older people would still address any white person, even a 12-year-old kid, as 鈥測es ma鈥檃m, yes sir鈥�. Winning in a field like physics showed me I could be in a different place but, truthfully, I didn鈥檛 fully believe it.

Were you a wild child?
Yes. I was taught, you鈥檙e a young black dude. You鈥檝e got to be tough, be a gangster. And I was. I carried a gun every day. I dropped out but went back, and took physics classes. I discovered that because I taught myself so much physics for fun, I could just show up for exams and blow the class away. But I also knew I would need to learn mathematics, and I was horrible at it. I came up with an idea to do every problem in the calculus book. After that, I never got lower than A in mathematics again.

鈥淚 was taught, you鈥檙e a young black dude. You鈥檝e got to be tough, be a gangster鈥�

How did you end up at Stanford University?
From 1979 to 1989, Stanford graduated 30 black PhDs in physics 鈥� more than anywhere. This was because William Shockley, inventor of the transistor and a professor there, was an outspoken racist and Stanford wanted to repair its reputation. One group on the board said, let鈥檚 recruit top black physics students from MIT, or Morehouse College 鈥� people who would do well regardless. But others said, no, let鈥檚 do this right and find smart people who have never had the educational opportunity.

How did you cope at Stanford?
I was their guinea pig. My education was so poor I had to do two years of undergraduate courses to prepare myself for the graduate courses and the qualifying exam. One thing I learned in my upbringing was to be self-sufficient 鈥� we farmed, hunted, fished. Every kid learned a work ethic. I took that and my perseverance along. When they said, 鈥測ou can鈥檛 do it 鈥� that was my motivation.鈥�

Did you do well?
Oh my goodness, it was terrible. We had a qualifying exam, and I failed first time. But my PhD adviser, the late great , believed in me, and encouraged me to try again. I did. I made it. You know the craziest thing now? I felt so mistreated 鈥� it was competitive, I was out of Mississippi, a country bumpkin in the palace. When I run into these people they say: 鈥淗akeem, you were one of the smartest ones!鈥� I laugh and wonder, when did you develop that opinion?

How did you get involved in African science?
On my way to a meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists in 2002 I met Kevin Hand, a graduate student who was going to talk there about his outreach work in Africa. He told me I had to get involved. We ended up going all over Africa. I saw what the conditions were like, how brilliant the students were. I was amazed to find the image the media paints is not what Africa is. There is so much education. The problem is not that people don鈥檛 have talent, it鈥檚 that they鈥檙e broke.

And while many positive things are being done, they can fall short of being effective. For example, funding agencies now enforce an open data policy to democratise astronomy. So the data is 鈥渇ree鈥� but the knowledge of how to process it remains proprietary.

How will the One Telescope project be different?
We鈥檙e not using traditional funding channels. We鈥檙e going to crowd-source fund these telescopes. Then we鈥檙e going to open-source the knowledge needed to complete the science. Last, we鈥檙e going to combine everyone into a single intellectual community. I guarantee someday soon we鈥檒l have a deluge of scientific authors from the developing world like we鈥檝e never seen before.