05/11/2025
"After studying astrophysics in Leiden, I moved to the United States for my PhD and postdoc. I had a really great time at major institutions, including Harvard University, the Flatiron Institute in New York, and Princeton University. Yet, I always wanted to return to Europe. Despite the great academic freedom in the US, the values and social equality in Europe are more important to me. Besides, the Netherlands is truly exceptionally good when it comes to astronomy! I believe we have the most astronomers per capita.
At Radboud University, I research gravitational waves and black holes. Gravitational waves are difficult to make sexy, but I actually find them the most impressive thing to exist. They were only discovered ten years ago, and it was as if we gained a new sense in astronomy. We now see not only electromagnetic light, but also gravity.
That's just as impressive as when we could observe radio waves for the first time 200 years ago. Back then, no one could have imagined that we'd use them so much now, for the internet for example. With gravitational waves, we're at the beginning of many discoveries. In the next two to five years, we're going to answer a lot of questions.
The beauty of my work is puzzle-solving. Together with students and colleagues, we all share theories, we call that story time, and then we see if it could be right.
The ultimate moment for me would be if we get all the puzzle pieces in place. For example, we have gravitational waves and supernovae that we're trying to understand, but those are actually all pieces of the same story. We need to click that whole story together, so we get one model that explains all those observations. That sounds almost simple, but it's super difficult."
Lieke van Son, Assistant Professor in Astrophysics
