If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has anything to do with it, everyone will know of the woman who captured the first photo of a black hole: Katie Bouman. Bouman, a 29-year-old computer scientist, made history on April 10 as the image was circulated for the first time.
AOC wasted no time in congratulating the scientist: “Take your rightful seat in history, Dr. Bouman!,” she wrote on Twitter. “Congratulations and thank you for your enormous contribution to the advancements of science and mankind. Here’s to #WomenInSTEM!,” which stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
As a graduate student Dr Bouman helped to lead the development of a computer programme that made the breakthrough image possible. She started making the algorithm three years ago while she was still studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed,” she wrote in the caption to the Facebook post. The image of the black hole shows a halo of dust and gas 500 million trillion kilometres from planet earth.
Captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) – a combination of eight telescopes – was made possible thanks to Dr Bouman’s algorithm. Now an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences at the California Institute of Technology, she insists it was a team effort of 200 scientists to capture the image of the black hole. “No one of us could’ve done it alone,” she told CNN. “It came together because of lots of different people from many different backgrounds. We’re a melting pot of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, and that’s what it took to achieve something once thought impossible.”
