The character arc of Katie Bouman
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born in 1989 in West Lafayette, Indiana. Between then and now sit imaging research conducted at a university while she was still at high school, a school leaving certificate in 2007, a master's thesis on estimating the properties of fabric by watching it move, a doctorate on seeing around corners and imaging black holes, a place on the Event Horizon Telescope project from 2013, an imaging algorithm she led the development of, the first image of a black hole in April 2019, a viral photograph of her reaction to it, a wave of online harassment, a professorship, and an asteroid. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Katie Bouman?
The picture went round the world. So did the abuse.
She was doing imaging research at a university while still a high school student, and left school in 2007. Her master's thesis was on estimating the material properties of fabric by observing how it moves, which won an award for the best master's thesis in electrical engineering that year. Her doctoral dissertation was called extreme imaging via physical model inversion, seeing around corners and imaging black holes, which is a fair summary of the whole career.
She joined the Event Horizon Telescope project in 2013, at twenty four. It is a telescope assembled out of observatories across the planet, and the problem it poses is essentially one of reconstruction: you have a tiny fraction of the data you would need and you have to work out what is actually there without inventing it. She led the development of an algorithm for imaging black holes, and after her doctorate she went to Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow on the imaging team.
Her algorithm inspired the image validation procedures used when the first image of a black hole was produced in April 2019. She verified images, selected the parameters that filtered what the telescope had gathered, and helped develop a framework that compared results from different reconstruction techniques against each other, which is the step that stops a team seeing what it hopes to see.
A photograph of her reaction to the detection went viral. Some of the coverage misleadingly implied she was a lone genius behind the image, which she has never claimed and which was not true of a project that size. She then became the target of online harassment, including attempts to undermine her contributions by crediting a male colleague alone with work the team had done. That colleague, Andrew Chael, publicly criticised what he called awful and sexist attacks on his colleague and friend.
She joined the California Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in June 2019, was given a named professorship in 2020 and promoted to associate professor of computing and mathematical sciences, electrical engineering and astronomy in 2024. An asteroid was named after her in 2021. She was one of the BBC's hundred women of 2019 and received a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2024. Her group is still analysing the telescope's images to learn about relativity in a strong gravitational field.
The moments
Katie Bouman's timeline.
The 2000s
Research, while still at school
Milestone, and it changed everything. Doing real research before she had left school.
The 2010s
She joins the telescope
Milestone, and it changed everything. A telescope made of the whole planet, and she signed up to it.
Fabric, read from motion
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Working out what cloth is made of by watching it move.
An algorithm for black holes
Milestone, and it changed everything. A method for seeing something nobody had photographed.
Seeing around corners
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A thesis title that reads like a description of her career.
Harvard, on the imaging team
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A postdoctoral post, on the team that would do it.
The first image of a black hole
Milestone, and it changed everything. Six years of work, and a picture nobody had ever seen.
The photograph goes round the world
Setback, and it changed everything. A picture of her face, and a story that was not true.
The harassment
Setback, and it changed everything. Attacked for a claim she had never made.
Correct the story, or get back to work
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: keep working, taken, or fight it in public. She was given a named professorship in 2020, an asteroid in 2021, and a promotion and a research fellowship in 2024.
A professorship at Caltech
Milestone, and it changed everything. Hired to keep doing it, in the middle of all that noise.
A hundred women
Milestone. Named, properly, for the work.
The 2020s
A named professorship
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A year in, and a named chair.
An asteroid
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A rock in the solar system, with her name on it.
Associate professor, and a fellowship
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Three departments, one professor.
The most famous photograph of her is one of somebody looking at a screen, taken by somebody else, in a room full of people who all did the work. What she set moving is in the method rather than the moment: a way of checking an image against itself so that a team cannot accidentally see what it wants to see.
Your turn
Every line draws a unique story.
Hers has the strangest setback in the gallery: being congratulated too loudly, by people who then attacked her for it. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Katie Bouman: frequently asked questions
What people ask about her line.
What is Katie Bouman's character arc?
What did Katie Bouman do for the black hole image?
Was Katie Bouman the lone genius behind the image?
Why was Katie Bouman harassed?
Where does Katie Bouman work?
Is there an asteroid named after Katie Bouman?
Where does this timeline of Katie Bouman's life come from?
More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with her.
Sources
- Katie Bouman, English Wikipedia biography.
- Event Horizon Telescope records for the first image of a black hole in April 2019 and her role in verifying images and selecting filtering parameters.
- Andrew Chael's public statement about the attacks on her, quoted here in part.
- Her birth date is published only to the year, so no day or month is shown here.
- Nobody is named on this page in connection with the harassment except the colleague who publicly defended her.