Megan Pickett is a queer theoretical astrophysicist whose work stretches from the swirling chaos of protoplanetary disks to the complex choreography of the early solar system. Currently serving as the chair of the physics department at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, Megan made history as the first woman to earn tenure in physics at the institution. Before joining Lawrence in 2006, she was a tenured professor at Purdue University Calumet and held a postdoctoral position at NASA Ames, where her office overlooked a runway that occasionally launched U-2 spy planes, loud enough to rattle the stars (and her desk).
Her academic path started with a physics degree from Cornell University and continued with a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Indiana University. But Megan’s impact goes far beyond gravitational forces and celestial mechanics. A passionate advocate for equity in science, she has spearheaded cross-disciplinary efforts to increase inclusivity and belonging in STEM, with a particular focus on historically underrepresented groups. She’s also deeply engaged in exploring the historical narratives of women in science and broadening astronomy education to include celestial traditions beyond the Western canon. Outside of academia, Megan is just as stellar. She’s directed both the Gender Studies and First Year Studies programs at Lawrence, run marathons (including the grueling but glorious Fox Cities Marathon), and spent twelve years as a jammer in roller derby leagues in Wisconsin and Seattle, because apparently, defying gravity in one universe wasn’t enough. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Megan has called many cities home, from San Diego (where she learned to drive, and thus, as her father claims, where she's really from) to Berkeley, Denver, and Kansas City. Today, she’s back in her home state, teaching, running, skating, and helping her students discover their place in the universe, one orbit at a time.
Monika: Hello, Megan! Thank you for accepting my invitation.
Megan: Hello, you are quite welcome. Thank you for the invitation.
Monika: What first pulled you into the world of stars? Was it a love at first light kind of thing, or did the universe slowly reel you in with its cosmic charm?
Megan: It was a book that my brother Galen brought home for me when I had the flu. I was thirteen and had been ill enough to miss almost two weeks of school–very unusual for me–and my brother brought a book from the library called “The Stars: A New Way to See Them,” by H. A. Rey (one of the authors of the Curious George books). Rey had loved the night sky, but could never see the constellations that everyone else could, so he wrote a book in which he erased the lines and drew his own, making the constellations look like (mostly) what they were supposed to look like. I read through the book and made flash cards, and the night before I was supposed to go back to school, I ran outside and could finally see the constellations. I told my father, who was standing in the doorway, “Daddy, I can see the stars,” and I knew right then that I would be an astronomer. My path hasn’t wavered since, nearly 47 years later.
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| "I think humility in the face of Nature is a good thing." |
Monika: What can people actually learn from looking at the stars, besides how small we are and how badly we need glasses?
Megan: I think humility in the face of Nature is a good thing and in short supply these days, but I’d like to turn it around a bit. In all that vastness, the incomprehensible breadth and depth of space and time, there is only one of each of us. I think astronomy helps us appreciate, ironically enough, that we are special because we are so tiny in the face of that.
There’s more to it, of course. The other side to that coin is that, as I tell my students, our bodies are on loan from the stars. Every atom in your body began its existence inside a star, or at the moment of a stellar explosion, or was a primordial part of the Universe when it was only 3 minutes old. And, in time, those atoms will return to the cosmos, finding their way back into other stars, perhaps other planets, maybe–maybe–other beings.
When we look at the night sky, we’re looking into a mirror, and I find great comfort and not a little awe in that.
Monika: There’s something I hadn’t really thought about until I was preparing for this interview. We hear a lot about air pollution and water pollution, but I had no idea that light pollution is also something we’re dealing with. How is light pollution actually created?
Megan: Light pollution is extra light that isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do–straying into the night and making it impossible to see the stars in the same way we could when I was a child. Mostly this comes from poor choices in lighting (unshielded street lights, spot lights or security lights on all night, even building lights at businesses, schools, and homes that are on all night, needlessly).
Monika: Why should we care about light pollution? What are we losing when we can’t see the stars anymore?
Megan: Well, we are losing a real connection to our own heritage. Our ancestors, whatever our background, knew the night sky and not only used it as a calendar, but placed in its infinitude celebrations of people and places, stories and legends, for all to see. These days, in fact, only about 1% of Americans can see the Milky Way, our home in the cosmos, and home to hundreds of billions of stars.
But we lose more than just a connection to our past. We evolved under a richly dark night sky, and the evidence is quite clear that its loss has detrimental health effects on us. Animals, too, are affected by over-predation and the disruption of mating and migration. Ironically enough, over-lighting has also caused accidents from glare on road surfaces (many new LED street lights are bluer than their replacements, which increases glare).
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| "We upset some rather simple ways of looking at the universe and our place in it." |
Monika: You’ve been following eclipses for years, and once, you mentioned that ducks landed, crickets chirped, and streetlights turned on, as if nature itself was fooled into thinking night had fallen. Is it fair to say that a total solar eclipse is the universe's most convincing magic trick?
Megan: There is definitely something deeply moving about a total solar eclipse. I’ve been lucky enough to see two–one in 2017 and last year’s magnificent event. You feel it especially when you witness the spectacle with others. Both times, as the Sun disappeared, crowds applauded and people cried. I can still pull on that emotional response I had at the moment of totality.
Even when I was there for work, I live-streamed the last eclipse from Austin for my university, I felt a great connection to something much larger than myself, something that tied my journey with the other humans there.
And then, when the Sun reappears, after a few minutes, more applause, and a brief moment when everyone knows they witnessed something that was both quite ordinary in some ways and in others breath-taking in its emotional reach.
Monika: Let me borrow the metaphor of a solar eclipse to describe the current situation of the transgender community, something beautiful, rare, and misunderstood. Do you think some people treat us the way they do simply because they’re afraid of what they don’t understand?
Megan: I think there is certainly something to that. But I also think that some of the hate and fear comes from a profoundly sad place, to be honest. Trans people living their lives, whether out and loud and proud, or quietly, have made a bold choice for happiness and wholeness against very long odds. There’s a dignity and courage and, I think, deep empathy, in that choice, and many people, certainly our allies, can see that for what it is and celebrate it, and us. Others, I think, wish they could be so bold, wish they could make those kinds of choices, wish they could face down long odds and be as genuine as any trans person. For many reasons, they can’t, or think they can’t, and I think that’s the origin of much of the hatred.
Of course, there are plenty of other reasons people feel threatened by trans folks. We upset some rather simple ways of looking at the universe and our place in it, or they’re taught to hate, or really any other reason someone chooses bigotry over understanding. I think the people who wish us harm are rather small and sadly pathetic, even as they wield physical and political power against us.
Monika: Intolerance seems to be spreading not only in the US but also in Europe, especially with the recent ruling by Britain’s highest court, which decided that only biological women, not trans women, meet the definition of a woman under equality laws. Does this mean we’re doomed, or is there still hope for progress?
Megan: I’ll be honest that I thought we had rounded something of a corner the last couple of years. That could well be my lived experience as a professor on a college campus, and my career in roller derby–two places that not only tolerate difference, but lift up and celebrate it. So I was shocked especially with the tone that the recent election took, which was particularly horrifying in Wisconsin as a swing state and a state in which there was a close senate campaign. And of course in the aftermath of all that things have gotten very, very bad: from executive orders to 850 bills introduced or passed, to the UK supreme court, to just the political discourse: if the republicans hated us, some of the democrats (at least at the federal level) blamed trans folks for losing the election.
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| "As trans people, we grow up with secrets, and holding mine became an increasing burden for me." |
And yet, I think we are seeing all this negative energy and effort not just because Project 2025 organized one side, which it did, or because the current president knew he could use us as a wedge issue, which he could. Most Americans, and I think this is true for most people, really don’t agree with the transphobic hate. Most people have their own things to worry about, and I think, too, that more and more people are beginning to realize they actually know trans people. So I think the surge in hatred is a last gasp of a dying breed. They know their days are numbered. They know they cannot get rid of us. Now, they will certainly try, and what they’ve already done has hurt a lot of people, and will hurt a lot of people. Not all of us will make it through the next four years. But they can see the writing on the wall, and whether or not I live long enough that the trans experience becomes so ordinary it’s hardly worth noting, that day will come. I do believe that.
Monika: So many of us navigate the roles of wives, mothers, and daughters, often carrying the weight of our pasts and sometimes longing to leave it all behind. Yet, you’ve chosen to embrace your identity with such strength, becoming an advocate for transgender rights and vocal about presenting a positive image of our community in society. In the face of all this, have you ever felt the pull of staying in the shadows, of simply being seen as a woman, without the added layers of being a transgender woman?
Megan: I do. I transitioned in 2003, and for most of the time since then, I had lived a rather quiet life as a professor-derby skater-long distance runner-astronomer. I told my father, who supported me every step of the way, that all I ever wanted was a quiet, ordinary life, that activism was not something I had planned. So I lived a life, if not completely stealth, in some in-between world, where there were large swaths of people who never knew, and I didn’t talk about it, and some people–mostly my family and old friends, a few colleagues–knew. Even then, it wasn’t really the subject of many conversations.
The election changed all that, although in truth I had been mulling it over for some time. As trans people, we grow up with secrets, and holding mine became an increasing burden for me. Too, I could see I resented holding this part of my life a secret because of a partner’s choice or fears of what her family would think. So I think there was something in motion, but the dam really burst after the election.
I realized, last November, that I have a great deal of privilege, a job that is secure, a good deal of passing privilege, some very supportive friends and family, and the ability to speak and write for a public audience. That’s not to say everyone ought to be an activist. I think that is a deeply personal choice, one I wouldn’t begrudge another.
So by degrees, a little at first, and then something every day now on social media or in public speaking or at work, I am doing what I can for the rights of trans folks. It isn’t always a great experience; I doubt anyone would like the names I’ve been called or the insults thrown my way. But it feels important and worthwhile. If I can convince one trans person, especially a student, that they are going to be ok, or that they have someone in their corner, it’s worth it. If I can convince someone that trans folks are just like everyone else, deserving of love and respect, it’s worth it.
I don’t pretend to have a large platform or long reach. But every echo extends a single voice far beyond what it can do on its own. I hope that’s me.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Megan Pickett.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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