Guinevere Kauffmann

Guinevere Alice Mei-Ing Kauffmann is an astrophysicist and best known for studying the physics of galaxies.

Academic career Kauffmann obtained a B.Sc.(Hons) in applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town in 1988 and an M.Sc. in astronomy in 1990. She obtained her Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Cambridge in 1993, working with Simon White, whom she later married.

She was a member of the Miller Research Fellows program at the University of California, Berkeley, and was then employed as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, both in Garching, Germany. She became head of a research team at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in 2003. In 2013, she was appointed a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director (currently one of four) at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.

Her research interests include models of galaxy formation; analysis of observed properties of galaxies, including their atomic and molecular gas; active galactic nuclei; and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and other large spectroscopic surveys of galaxies.

From 2004 to 2008 Kauffmann coordinated "Multi-wavelength Analysis of Galaxy Populations" (MAGPOP) a Marie Curie Research Training Network of the European Union that brought together researchers from all over Europe for interdisciplinary projects.

Awards In 1997, Guinevere Kauffmann received the Otto Hahn Medal. In 2002, she received the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis. In 2012, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the US.

Bullying allegations

In February 2018, the German news magazine Spiegel Online published an article about abuse of power by senior scientists at the MPI for Astrophysics. Several emails obtained by BuzzFeed News Germany revealed in June 2018 that the allegations concerned MPA director Guinevere Kauffmann, who was accused of harassing and bullying students and scientists for years. Leaked emails published by BuzzFeed News Germany also include what has been described as racist, sexist and homophobic statements directed at employees and students. Responding to questions by the journal Nature, Kauffmann denied the accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia, claiming that she is merely interested in cultural differences between people and Buzzfeed had made severe errors. She conceded that as a student she was subject to "very high pressure supervision", acknowledging however that such a mentoring style "has now become unacceptable" and claiming to have changed her behavior substantially after complaints were received. This and other cases sparked a general debate about the abuse of power in science.

In August 2018, Science Magazine, as part of a longer article about bullying at a different Max Planck Institute, reported allegations of bullying and sexual harassment at the MPI for Astrophysics noting that Kauffmann had been accused of bullying, was receiving coaching and daily monitoring, and had been given a drastically reduced group to lead. In an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the president of the Max Planck Society admitted that these scandals had shown deficiencies in and the need for improvement of the Society's procedures for dealing with complaints.

Selected publications

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