Starburst activity is often heavily obscured by dust. To see through the dust and measure the full extent, power and dynamics of the starburst, we are surveying hydrogen radio recombination lines (RRLs) from famous nearby starburst galaxies. Exploiting the improved sensitivity and dynamic range of aperture synthesis arrays such as the VLA and the AT and millimeter-wave telescopes such as SEST and the IRAM-30m telescope, we have searched for RRLs in about 25 starburst galaxies. RRLs have been detected in 14 galaxies. The observations were made variously at 1.4, 4.9, 8.4, 86, 135 and 232 GHz (Anantharamaiah et al 1993, Zhao et al 1996, 1997, Phookun et al 1997). Table 1 summarizes the observations. In all the cases the detected line originates in the nuclear starburst region and the emission region is resolved with a beam of 1–3″.