Young, brilliant, and tired of being underestimated

Physics student Chamilla Terp looks like most other 23-year-olds in Copenhagen. But Chamilla — whose name is pronounced ‘Shamilla’ with a soft s — is anything but ordinary.

In the autumn of 2024, she did something most students barely dare to dream of: She published a scientific article based on her bachelor’s project.

Her discovery didn’t just put her on the map as one of the most promising talents in science — it also put her in direct competition with researchers from elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge.

Chamilla Terp has been in demand ever since the article came out. It is as if every Danish media outlet wanted a piece of the woman who — like her name — is anything but ordinary.

Bohr’s legacy

It was in 2020 when Chamilla Terp started studying physics. She had just finished secondary school, and yet another COVID-19 lockdown was on the horizon. Her original plan had been to take a couple of gap years to travel and attend a Danish folk high school. But with her future more likely to involve staring at her bedroom wall than lying on a Bali beach, she opted to begin her studies straight away.

She was nervous. Her expectations were shaped by pop culture stereotypes of quirky, introverted, nerdy types — not exactly the kind of people you’d dream of hanging out with at a Friday bar.

But Chamilla Terp’s prejudices about anti-social physicists were quickly debunked. And when the pandemic restrictions finally lifted, she threw herself into everything social — being an intro week guide, on the party committee, doing the student revue.

Great discoveries are often made by people who have never worked in the field before.

Chamilla Terp

»I discovered how amazing the physics programme is. It’s an open environment where everyone is welcome. There are so many different kinds of people here, and no one ever gives you weird looks.«

This openness extends throughout the department, where it’s part of the culture that students can knock on professors’ doors for a chat. Chamilla Terp sees this environment as a direct legacy from Niels Bohr.

»His philosophy was that physics should be an open environment where students could be heard, and where there was space for everyone. It permeates the whole programme.«

At one point, Chamilla Terp was unsure which path she wanted to take in physics, so she started approaching various researchers. She got talking to an astrophysicist, with whom she later wrote an assignment — and who eventually became the supervisor for her bachelor project. He had found a galaxy with a light signature that looked a bit odd and suggested she take a closer look at it.

Strength in naivety

Chamilla Terp approached the galaxy with the aim of keeping her study as simple as possible. She was still fairly new to astrophysics, so the project needed to be manageable if she was to complete it.

This simplified approach turned out to be a strength. Researchers at major UK universities had also taken an interest in the galaxy, so the Danish student suddenly found herself in a race with elite scientists who had a major head start. They could publish their articles immediately, while Chamilla Terp had to wait until after she had defended her bachelor project.

Fortunately, the UK researchers took a completely different approach. While she opted for simplicity, they used more elaborate methods to stretch conventional physics in order to explain the galaxy’s mysterious light. Chamilla Terp had a straightforward explanation — and it actually seemed to fit.

»I think researchers who’ve been in a field for a long time can get stuck doing things the way they’ve always done. Big discoveries are often made by people who have never worked in the field before and who approach it with nothing more than a fresh perspective.«

The experience has given Chamilla Terp a new kind of confidence — one that makes her view her naivety as a strength. She’s started to trust her intuition. Sometimes, like with the galaxy discovery, it pays off. Other times, she has to admit someone else got there first.

»That’s why it’s so great being young. I have no idea what others would normally do — so I just do something. The most fascinating thing about physics is that you can use it to explain pretty much everything,« she says.

Chamilla’s time machine

»This galaxy is insanely far away — about a billion years after the Big Bang. It’s a really old galaxy, but when we look at it, it’s actually very young.«

Chamilla Terp is trying to explain her discovery and must have noticed the puzzled look on my face. Fortunately, she is patient — a trait she’s likely honed through her work as a science communicator at the Planetarium.

»I usually call telescopes little time machines, because we’re always looking into the past when we look up at the sky through a telescope.«

The key thing to understand when working with cosmic phenomena, she says, is how light travels. Light has to traverse the entire universe before it reaches us. A celestial object lighting up the summer night sky is shining with light that is billions of years old. So when we look out into space, we’re essentially looking back in time.

We physicists need to get out of our bubble, because it might not matter what we do if it never reaches anyone.

Chamilla Terp

This is why Chamilla Terp can study a galaxy as it looked like 12 billion years ago.

When light from young galaxies travels across the universe, it encounters obstacles before reaching Earth. At this point in cosmic history, researchers have found large amounts of neutral gas surrounding these new galaxies, which blocks the light from reaching us.

»Imagine someone shining a torch at us. If something stands in front of it, the light gets blocked. But we know something’s missing, because we’d expect light to come from the torch.«

As expected, some of the light from Chamilla Terp’s galaxy vanished. But intriguingly, some of it still made it through and reached Earth. So she set out to investigate why not all of the light disappeared.

»We discovered that the neutral gas cloud was still there — it just wasn’t where we thought it would be. Because the gas cloud was so far away from the galaxy, the light could travel through the universe before it hit the cloud. That meant only some of the light got absorbed, while the rest could still pass through and reach us.«

Physics is like football

For Chamilla Terp, physics isn’t just about finding answers — it’s about helping others understand them too. Since she started working at the Planetarium, she has spent countless hours breaking down complex scientific concepts into something simple.

»We physicists need to get out of our bubble, because it might not matter what we do if it never reaches anyone.«

It takes a good dose of imagination to be both a communicator and a physicist. Chamilla Terp has always loved reading, because when she opens a book, the words turn into images and she disappears into other worlds — almost like watching a movie, she says. It’s a skill she draws on as a physicist, where tiny pixelated images on a screen are meant to represent galaxies 12 billion light-years away.

»If you start thinking too hard about it, it stops making sense. So instead, I try to visualise what it looks like out there in space.«

She does the same when she explains complex physics to others. With the help of everyday examples and analogies, she makes the abstract comprehensible. And when the conversation turns to what it’s like being a woman in physics, Chamilla Terp pulls out a soccer metaphor.

As a child, Chamilla Terp played football, and the girls’ teams were often given lower priority. They got the worst training slots, inherited the boys’ worn-out kit, and had to play on frozen gravel pitches in winter — while the boys got to train on heated artificial turf.

»I think I’ve been hardened by growing up in such a male-dominated environment. Luckily, I had my dad as a coach — he fought for our team, even when the club didn’t.«

But sport also taught her that you can succeed even without role models. So when she later entered the male-dominated world of physics, it was with the same mindset:

»When I started studying, I had almost no female role models. And I know that the further you get in academia, the fewer women you encounter.«

Still far from equality

In the winter of 2025, journalists started calling Chamilla Terp. They had heard how she solved the mystery of the galaxy’s light. The Danish media Politiken wanted to do a profile, the TV show Good Morning Denmark invited her on — and Chamilla Terp was up for all of it. But it also began to weigh on her whether the media would make the story about her being a young female physics student, instead of the fact that she had made a major discovery.

»The fact that I’m a woman can be part of the story — but it shouldn’t be the story. What would disappoint me the most is if I were only highlighted because I’m a woman, and not because I’ve done something cool.«

Everyday experiences still remind her that women in physics are not on equal footing with men. She recalls an episode at the Planetarium where a male visitor asked her male colleague a technical question. When the colleague referred him to her, the guest replied that he didn’t need help after all.

I love exploring and learning new things, I love getting smarter, and the best part is sharing the discoveries with others.

Chamilla Terp

»It affected me more than I expected. Was it because I’m a woman? Did he think I wasn’t qualified to answer?«

Even well-meaning compliments can ring hollow, Chamilla Terp says:

»I’m often told that I’m actually pretty smart. And when I mention it, my male fellow students don’t see the issue. But it’s a backhanded compliment. Why is it surprising that I’m smart?«

But just like on the football pitch, she refuses to be limited by other people’s expectations. She doesn’t mind being a role model — but it should be for her scientific achievements, not because she’s a woman.

These days, Chamilla Terp feels more drawn to her research than to upcoming exams.

»Sometimes I’d rather work on my own research than do some assignment. But the assignments still have to be done,« says Chamilla Terp, describing it as a balancing act to juggle studies, research, work and free time.

»Sometimes I could be better at just saying ‘screw it!’ — and relax. But when I’m passionate about something, it pulls me in more than the idea of not doing it.«

Chamilla Terp now feels she has become better at achieving this balance. When she helps her supervisor with research projects, things move faster — because she’s already more experienced than when she started her bachelor project.

Her dream is to do a PhD. The research world combines all the things Chamilla Terp loves the most:

»I could easily be a forever student. I love exploring and learning new things, I love getting smarter, and the best part is sharing the discoveries with others.«