Sabine Hossenfelder

A researcher at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) she has become well known for her work of scientific popularising with her blog Backreaction. With a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Frankfurt, she has mainly carried out research in the phenomenology of quantum gravity, which consists in developing theoretical models that will make it possible to find experimental evidence of what is known as quantum gravity. In her blog she has been very critical of the “standard model” of particle physics and the costly experiments CERN is carrying out in an attempt to confirm its validity. In her work as a scientific populariser she frequently writes for publications like New Scientist and Scientific American, and she has also published the book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Basic Books, 2018), in which she describes the problems of constructing scientific theories based on criteria like beauty and elegance. She believes that by applying an ideal of beauty to mathematical formulas, scientists have often led contemporary physics into a dead end of sterile debates.