Kristin Abkemeier

“Thesis, antithesis, synthesis” is the theme of Kristin Abkemeier’s life in and out of science. Inspired by Sally Ride’s space shuttle flight, the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, and second-wave feminism. she pursued a career in physics at at Princeton, Cambridge, and the University of Chicago. Along the way, a life in physics came to look less appealing, so after defending her graduate dissertation she left science and moved to San Francisco with her husband.

After a stint in business software development, Kristin indulged a long-suppressed passion and talent by enrolling in art school for illustration—just about as diametrically far from physics as she could get. Perhaps a little too far removed—after a couple of years of the starving artist thing, she concluded that leveraging her science background into writing might be a more rewarding way to go.

Now Kristin is delighted to inaugurate the travel department for Inkling, because she thinks that science, art, and culture are even cooler when they’re all mixed together. She also has an essay in the just-published anthology She’s Such a Geek.

Kristin currently combines work in the public information office at the Exploratorium science museum with freelance writing and editing. And she still pages through her books of pen and ink cartoons by Saul Steinberg, Jean-Jacques Sempe, and Edward Sorel as inspiration for illustrating her own writing someday.