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Andrew Chael, a Ph.D. candidate in physics at Harvard University working on the Black Hole Initiative, defended his colleague Katherine Bouman against internet trolls who sought to minimize her role in the project -- specifically the photo of a black hole revealed last week. Reacting to comments and memes saying that Chael -- not Bouman -- did most of the work but got the least credit, Chael said on Twitter that “if you are congratulating me because you have a sexist vendetta against Katie, please go away and reconsider your priorities in life.”
A photo of Bouman with the black hole image was widely circulated last week. But Bouman, a postdoctoral fellow with the Event Horizon Telescope, has stressed the importance of teamwork in the discovery. “The image shown today is the combination of images produced by multiple methods,” she wrote on Facebook. “No one algorithm or person made this image. It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instruments, data processing, imaging methods and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat.”