Where GW Astronomy Would Be Today Without Karsten Danzmann: Nowhere!

This will be a talk about Karsten Danzmann’s impact on gravitational wave astronomy. For over thirty years, Karsten Danzmann has played a leading role in almost all the important gravitational wave detection projects, as well as directing two research institutes and mentoring a generation of talented experimental physicists. While his work will be well known to this audience, the impact of his work on the global field of gravitational wave astronomy may not be so clear. I will defend the assertion that, without Karsten Danzmann`s huge energy and skilled leadership, we might still be waiting for the first detection, and the planned space and ground-based detectors of the next generation might just be idle pipe-dreams.