Silke Ackermann

Silke Ackermann is a German museum curator and historian of science who has worked in Germany and England. Ackermann studied History and Oriental Languages at the University of Frankfurt in Germany. After working for the "Regesta Imperii" Project, she wrote a thesis on the 13th-century mathematician, astronomer and astrologer Michael Scot (1175–c.1232), who was based at the court of Frederick II. During this research, Ackermann studied History of Science at the Institute for the History of Science within Frankfurt University and acted as an assistant to Prof. David King. From 1996, Ackermann was the Curator of European and Islamic scientific instruments at the British Museum in London. In 2012, Ackermann took up a professorship at the University of Applied Sciences Baltic College in Schwerin, Germany, where she was later appointed president. From March 2014, Ackermann has been Director of the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University, taking over from Stephen Johnston who served as the Acting Director from 2012 to 2014. She is the first ever female head of a museum at the University of Oxford. Ackermann's research interests include the history of science of the Middle Ages and Renaissance and the Islamic World, scientific instruments (especially astrolabes), and knowledge transfer.