Katherine J. Mack (born 1 May 1981)[3] is a theoretical cosmologist who holds the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at Perimeter Institute. Her academic research investigates dark matter, vacuum decay and the epoch of reionisation.[4][1][5] Mack is also a popular science communicator who participates in social media and regularly writes for Scientific American, Slate, Sky & Telescope, Time and Cosmos.[6][7]

Katie Mack
Mack giving her talk on the End of the Universe at CERN on 25 February 2019
Born	Katherine J. Mack (1981-05-01) 1 May 1981 (age 41)
Alma mater	Princeton University (PhD) California Institute of Technology (BS)
Scientific career
Fields	Cosmology Theoretical astrophysics[1]
Institutions	Perimeter Institute North Carolina State University University of Melbourne University of Cambridge
Thesis	Tests of Early Universe Physics from Observational Astronomy (2009)
Doctoral advisor	Paul Steinhardt[2]
Website	www.astrokatie.com

Early life and education

External video
A Tour of the Universe: Women in Physics Lecture
Shells of Cosmic Time

Mack became interested in science as a child and built solar-powered cars out of Lego blocks.[8] Her mother is a fan of science fiction, and encouraged Mack to watch Star Trek and Star Wars.[9] Her grandfather was a student at Caltech and worked on the Apollo 11 mission.[10] She became more interested in spacetime and the Big Bang after attending talks by scientists such as Stephen Hawking.[8]

Mack attended California Institute of Technology, and appeared as an extra in the opening credits of the 2001 American comedy film Legally Blonde when they filmed on campus.[11] She received her undergraduate degree in physics in 2003.[12][13] Mack obtained her PhD in astrophysics from Princeton University in 2009.[14] Her thesis on the early universe was supervised by Paul Steinhardt.[2][15]

Research and career

After earning her doctorate, Mack joined the University of Cambridge as a Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) postdoctoral research fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology.[13] Later in 2012, Mack was a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow at the University of Melbourne.[16] Mack was involved with the construction of the dark matter detector SABRE.[17]

In January 2018, Mack became an Assistant Professor and a member of university's Leadership in Public Science Cluster in the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University.[18][19] She joined the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in June 2022, as the inaugural Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication.[20][21] The Canadian multidisciplinary research organization CIFAR named her one of the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars in 2022.[22]

Mack works at the intersection between fundamental physics and astrophysics. Her research considers dark matter,[23] vacuum decay,[24] the formation of galaxies, observable tracers of cosmic evolution and the Epoch of Reionisation.[25] Mack has described dark matter as one of science's "most pressing enigmas".[26][27] She has worked on dark matter self-annihilation[28] Mack has investigated whether the accretion of dark matter could result in the growth of primordial black holes (PBHs).[29] She has worked on the impact of PBHs on the cosmic microwave background.[30] She has become increasingly interested, too, in the end of the universe.[31]

Public engagement and advocacy

Mack maintains a strong science outreach presence on both social and traditional media.[32][33] She has been described by Motherboard and Creative Cultivate as a "social media celebrity".[8][17] Mack is a popular science writer, and has contributed to The Guardian, Scientific American, Slate, The Conversation, Sky & Telescope, Gizmodo, Time and Cosmos, as well as providing expert information to the BBC.[34][35][36][37][38][39] Mack's Twitter account has over 300,000 followers; her response to a climate change denier on that platform gained mainstream coverage,[40][41] as did her "Chirp for LIGO" upon the first detection of gravitational waves.[42][43] She was the 2017 Australian Institute of Physics Women in Physics lecturer, in which capacity she spent three weeks delivering talks at schools and universities across Australia.[44][45]

In 2018, Mack was chosen to be one of the judges for Nature magazine's newly founded Nature Research Awards for Inspiring Science and Innovating Science.[46] In February 2019 Mack appeared in an episode of The Jodcast, talking about her work and science communication.[47] Mack was a member of the jury for the Alfred P. Sloan Prize in the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.[48] In 2019, she was referenced on the Hozier track 'No Plan' from his album Wasteland, Baby!: "As Mack explained, there will be darkness again".[49]

She is a member of the Sloan Science & Film community, where she works on science fiction.[50][51]

Her first book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2020, the firm having won the rights to Mack's first book in an eight-way bidding battle.[52][53] It considers the five scenarios for the end of universe (both theoretically and practically),[52] and has received positive reviews both for its science outreach accuracy and its wit.[54][55][56] The book [57] is also a New York Times Notable Book and features on the best books of the year lists of The Washington Post, The Economist, New Scientist, Publishers Weekly, and The Guardian.[58]

Personal life

Mack is interested in the intersection of art, poetry and science.[59] She is bisexual.[60]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Katie Mack (astrophysicist).

• Official website
• Katie Mack on Twitter
• Katie Mack at NC State University

На других языках

[de] Katie Mack

[es] Katie Mack (astrofísica)