Katie Mack
Astrophysicist, author, aviator
Her first loves have always been physics and space. A self-described curious kid who grew up in Long Beach, California, Mack says she “was probably about 10 years old when I read A Brief History of Time, and when I saw that Stephen Hawking was described as a ‘cosmologist,’ I decided I wanted to be a cosmologist too.” She earned a physics degree at Caltech, then a doctorate at Princeton in astrophysical science before research fellowships at Cambridge University and Melbourne University. After that, she began a faculty job at North Carolina State University.
Mack also naturally aspired to be an astronaut. “When I was applying for the astronaut program with NASA, it was clear having experience in aviation would be something that would help my application.” But as an “always-busy academic, barely scraping by on academic wages,” flying didn’t seem to be in the cards.
“But then, in 2020, two things happened. One was that my first book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), was published, giving me a nice publication advance.” The other was the pandemic. Working remotely as a professor and limited to solo hobbies, it seemed the perfect time to learn something new. A chance encounter with a “Learn to Fly Here” sign in August 2020 led her to book a discovery flight. Mack was hooked. She earned her private pilot certificate in Northampton, Massachusetts, and her instrument rating in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Along the way I was also doing a lot of writing and public outreach,” she says, and also “got really into social media, sharing physics and astronomy on Twitter.” It was on Twitter that she first chatted with singer-songwriter Hozier, who would go on to write a song about her work (No Plan).
In 2022, Mack took up an independent research position at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada, splitting her time between cosmology research and science communication. She converted her FAA certificate to Transport Canada, and she notes that most of the rules are similar. The only challenge about flying in Canada? The weather, she says. “The other big difference is that GA is just much bigger and better supported in the States. There are more GA airports and a larger community. But I have found a really great community local to me, especially with the local chapter of The Ninety-Nines.”
When she’s not traveling the world lecturing on astrophysics to both students and the public, Mack is working on her second book, How to Build a Universe, which is scheduled for release in 2025. Follow her on social media at @astrokatiemack and on her website astrokatie.com. 
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