Katie Mack

How it started.

Katie grew up borrowing her mother’s science fiction books and magazines. Star Trek and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time helped turn her curiosity toward black holes, spacetime and the origin of the universe. She studied physics at Caltech before earning her PhD at Princeton.

Finding her audience.

As AstroKatie, she built an audience for clear explanations of the cosmos alongside her research and magazine writing. Her first book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), arrived in 2020 and became a New York Times Notable Book, using five possible cosmic endings as a way into big questions in physics.

Making physics approachable.

After research posts in Cambridge and Melbourne and a faculty role at North Carolina State University, Katie joined Perimeter Institute in June 2022 as its inaugural Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication. She combines research on dark matter and the early universe with work for curious readers and viewers.