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Dr. Dr. Susanne M Hoffmann

… is an astronomer and historian of astronomy from Berlin, Europe. She has been working as scientific staff at universities & freelancing independent scholar in planetariums and museums. 

  • History of Knowledge, Science and Technology
  • Cultural Astronomy

Expertise/ Research Outcomes 

  • Linked the Origins of Babylonian Constellations with general concepts of Cultural Astronomy (2024)
  • History of celestial globes and star catalogues
    • Reconstruction of historical constellations (since 2014)
    • planetarium software development (since 2018)
    • planetarium education development (since 1998)
  • MUL.APIN, the Babylonian Compendium of Astronomy
  • Hipparchus’s Celestial Globe and Star Catalogue (dissertation)
    • Reconstruction of Hipparchus’s Globe
    • Babylonian predecessors of Hipparchus 
    • Babylonian mathematical astronomy & astral science
    • Greek mathematical astronomy & astral science
  • History of Telescopes (in particular a study on the world’s biggest brachymedial telescope)
  • Education of Einstein’s Relativity Theory
  • Gravitational Lensing

Academic Background

  • history of science (specilisation: astronomy)
  • physics (specialisation: astronomy)
  • education (teacher education, edutainment, science journalism)

Activities / positions of honour

  • International Astronomical Union,
    • Working Group on Star Names
    • Office for Astronomical Outreach
    • Commission C5
  • data curator for constellations in the Stellarium team
  • member of board: Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (based in China)
  • member of board: CAP-Journal (based in Japan)
  • member of board: Journal of Skyscape Archaeology (based in the UK)
  • collaborator of State Museum for Prehistory Halle (Germany)

Research in astronomy

 

Methods:

  • data-driven history of exact science
  • applied historical astronomy
  • computational history
  • data management / data curation

Main Topic: celestial globes and maps

  •  consisting of
    • astrometry/ cartography
      • technology
      • mathematics of measurements
    • astrometrical frames of reference, e.g.
      • coordinate systems and their historical development
      • constellations (as frame of reference, as cultural calendar)
    • stars
      • their cultural history/ names,
      • their physics/ variabilities/ (exo)planets/
      • novae, supernovae and all types of eruptions
  • modelling: planetarium (software) and data management

Further Research Topics

  • gravity
    • Newton
    • Einstein’s general relativity
    • microlensing
  • optics
    • telescopes and their historical development
    • planetariums and their historical development
    • basical concepts (history of optics: from antiquity to the present)
  • time