Sabine Hossenfelder

Hossenfelder completed her undergraduate degree in 1997 at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main.[2] She remained there for a Master's degree under the supervision of Walter Greiner, entitled "Particle Production in Time Dependent Gravitational Fields", which she completed in 2000.[3] Hossenfelder received her doctorate "Black Holes in Large Extra Dimensions" from the same institution in 2003, under the supervision of Horst Stöcker.[4][5]

Hossenfelder remained in Germany until 2004 as a postdoctoral researcher at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany.[2] She moved to North America and completed research fellowships at the University of Arizona, Tucson, University of California, Santa Barbara and Perimeter Institute, Canada.[6][7][8] She joined Nordita Institute for Theoretical Physics, Sweden, in 2009 as an Assistant Professor.[9][10] In 2018 she was a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.[11]

Hossenfelder's research interest is in the phenomenology of quantum gravity.[9] She focuses on the role of Lorentz invariance and locality, which would be altered in the discovery of quantum gravity.[9] Hossenfelder is trying to find experimental evidence of quantum gravity.[12][13][14][15] Since 2007 she has been involved with the annual conference series "Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity".[16] Hossenfelder has created a number of YouTube videos exploring the topic.[17][18][19] She has been employed by the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies since 2015, where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group.[20] Hossenfelder has also been researching since at least 2008 on how technology is changing researchers' ability to publicize, discuss, or publish their research, when she co-organized the “Science in the 21st Century” workshop.[21]

Hossenfelder is a freelance popular science writer who has kept a blog since 2006.[22] She contributes to the Forbes column "Starts with a Bang"[23] as well as Quanta Magazine,[24] New Scientist,[25] Nature,[26] Scientific American,[27] Nautilus[28] and Physics Today. In 2016, Hossenfelder offered to act as a physics consultant on her blog—US$50 for twenty minutes of discussion—and had to recruit five extra physicists to deal with the demand.[29][30] In 2017 she created cards featuring pioneering quantum physicists.[31] Live Science and The Guardian quoted Hossenfelder as an authority when trying to evaluate the importance of Stephen Hawking's last scientific publication.[32][33]

Basic Books are the publishers of Hossenfelder's first book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, released in June 2018.[34][35][36] A review in Nature described it as "provocative",[37] and Frank Wilczek recommended it as an "intensely personal and intellectually hard-edged" book, even though he disagreed with it "on many points".[38] Peter Woit summarized the book's theme as follows:

At various points Hossenfelder makes it clear that her worry is that physicists are getting stuck due to outdated notions of "beauty", while at the same time she still believes that successful new ideas will come with their own new form of "beauty".[39]

Hossenfelder also is invited for talks, about "What is wrong with physics" for example.[40]

Hossenfelder wrote and sang a number of songs available on YouTube.[41][42]

• Sabine Hossenfelder, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, Basic Books, June 2018.
• Sabine Hossenfelder and Stacy S. McGaugh, "Is Dark Matter Real? Astrophysicists have piled up observations that are difficult to explain with dark matter. It is time to consider that there may be more to gravity than Einstein taught us", Scientific American, vol. 319, no. 2 (August 2018), pp. 36–43.

• Quotations related to Sabine Hossenfelder at Wikiquote
• Sabine Hossenfelder's personal website
• Sabine Hossenfelder's channel on YouTube