Elizabeth
Hello! Welcome to a lot of words chosen by me. I’m an astrophysicist and science communicator in Tokyo, Japan. My professional website can be found here.
This site contains my personal blog (updated a little erratically) with topics recently on quite a lot of cats, travel and wombling around Japan, and also links to my popular science articles (usually) on space missions and extrasolar planets.
Most of my recent articles are for the JAXA ISAS blog, Cosmos, although I have also written for publications such as Scientific American, Astronomy Magazine, space.com, Nautilus, How it Works Magazine, and the NASA NExSS Many Worlds site, and have covered topics from Egyptian coffins to Roomba vacuum cleaners that have twitter accounts.
My first popular science book, ‘The Planet Factory’ (Bloomsbury) is out now, and looks at the discovery on extrasolar planets and the search for a second Earth. I am also the lead editor and one of the authors of the textbook ‘Planetary Diversity’ (IOP/AAS).
Sneaking away from science, I’ve also contributed to fiction and non-fiction anthologies with a science fiction story for R.A.S.P. as part of their collective work, 'Everything is Spherical: An anthology of Dyslexic Writers', a travel tale for Travelers' Tales in their anthology, 'Wake up and smell the shit', and a piece with British composter Anna Clyne for 'Arcana VI';
Norah Neko
This is Norah, as seen in… a whole bunch of blog posts! Norah was a stray cat who I initially trapped and released as part of the community TNR (trap, neuter, return) program to improve the health of feral cats, and stop more kittens being born on the streets. While initially not at all friendly, Norah decided she was DONE with the street life and declared she was moving in.
No one could argue with that face.
In Japanese, “nora neko” (野良猫) means “stray cat”. I named her “Norah” as a pun when I took her to the vet to be spayed and now… she is Norah-the-non-Nora and the joke is on me.
Why “girl and kat”?
It was neat name when I was in my 20s, and is now in too many places (including my book jacket) to totally abandon. So I’m owning it. Plus, I do have a cat. (Also, I did try for ‘Girl and Cat’ but it was taken as a handle on the blog site I was using at the time!)
Messages, screams of adoration and offers to turn my blog into the sensation that makes me the next novelist to make the Forbes Billionaire List, please fill in the boxes here.
For media interviews, it may be necessary to go via my institute’s PR department. But I’ll try to help if I can!