Quotes by Margaret Wertheim - Page 1

I believe that there is a love that moves the sun and the other stars.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Believe
Moving
Stars
Copy Quote
All gradients of reality, all existential distinctions, have finally been annihilated.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Art
Existential
Reality
Copy Quote
One of the great sources of employment for people with Ph.D.s in geometry is the animation industry.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Animation
Employment
People
Source
Sources
Copy Quote
Nature rarely does anything mathematically perfect, and naturalism results from imperfections and deviations.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Imperfection
Naturalism
Perfect
Copy Quote
Computers are very powerful tools, but in the simulated world of the computer, everything has to be calculated.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Computers
Computer
Powerful
Tools
World
Calculated
Simulated
Copy Quote
Nature doesn't feel compelled to stick to a mathematically precise algorithm; in fact, nature probably can't stick to an algorithm.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Algorithms
Compelled
Facts
Precise
Sticks
Algorithm
Mathematically
Stick
Copy Quote
Female physicists, astronomers and mathematicians are up against more than 2,000 years of convention that has long portrayed these fields as inherently male.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Female
Fields
Long
Males
Years
Against
Male
Convention
Inherently
Mathematicians
Physicists
Portrayed
Copy Quote
If I could do anything in my life and be remembered for anything, I would like to be remembered for helping the world see the value of physical engagement with ideas.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Engagement
Helping
Ideas
If I Could
Remembered
World
Copy Quote
Though women are no longer barred from university laboratories and scientific societies, the idea that they are innately less suited to mathematical science is deeply ingrained in our cultural genes.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Genes
Mathematical
University
Women Are
Barred
Cultural
Deeply
Ingrained
Innately
Societies
Scientific
Suited
Copy Quote
When I was a physics major in the late 1970s, my very few fellow female students and I had high hopes that women would soon stand equal with men in science. But progress has proved slower than many of us imagined.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Men
Equal
Female
Physics
Progress
Science Men Women
Fellow
Science Women Men
Hopes
Proved
Slower
Copy Quote
As a child it was clear to me that in some sense math was in the world around us. I became fascinated by what this means. When you look at the shape of the sun and the moon, they're circles, so every time you see a circular thing, there's pi embedded in it.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Children
Math
Mean
Copy Quote
In the Pythagorean system, thinking about numbers, or doing mathematics, was an inherently masculine task. Mathematics was associated with the gods, and with transcendence from the material world; women, by their nature, were supposedly rooted in this latter, baser realm.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Latter
Masculine
Material World
Numbers
Rooted
Tasks
Thinking
Associated
Inherently
Realm
Supposedly
Task
Copy Quote
This is what I call the "cosmological problem" of science. Science has the instrumental function that has given us computers and so on, but its cosmological function is to give us a picture of the world we inhabit as human beings, and on that level it's failing a vast number of people.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Giving
People
World
Copy Quote
Simple DNA gradually morphed and evolved, so that you had the coming into being of ever more complex and diverse creatures, until one day you wake up and find there are peacocks and giraffes. Nature is an open-ended experiment based on morphing a DNA code, and ours is an open-ended experiment based on morphing a crochet code.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
One Day
Simple
Wake Up
Copy Quote
It turns out that hyperbolic structures are very common in nature, and the place where lots of people encounter them is coral reefs. Sea slugs, and a lot of other organisms with frilly forms, are biological manifestations of hyperbolic geometry, which is also found in the structure of lettuce leaves and kales, and some species of cactus.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Common
Geometry
People
Copy Quote
When you're in a room with twenty people who've all got the True Theory of the universe, it's difficult to know what to do. And the paradox is that so much important science is now being done by huge teams. With Higgs boson, for example, it's estimated there were around ten thousand scientists and engineers involved in building the machines that made this discovery possible.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Important
People
Team
Copy Quote
Almost all major scientific projects today are huge collaborations, yet we still have this public obsession with the idea of the individual scientific genius. One of my goals as a science communicator is to celebrate the collaborative dimensions of science, which I think will be critical for facing the ecological and resource challenges ahead. In a sense, we are all corals now.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Challenges
Goal
Thinking
Copy Quote
Mathematicians are proud of the fact that, generally, they do their work with a piece of chalk and a blackboard. They value hand-done proofs above all else. A big question in mathematics today is whether or not computational proofs are legitimate. Some mathematicians won't accept computational proofs and insist that a real proof must be done by the human hand and mind, using equations.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Done
Mind
Real
Copy Quote
Science is not just for an elite few. Science's vision of the universe is becoming increasingly inaccessible. That doesn't mean it's wrong. On some levels, general relativity is right, because we have to take its calculations into account to produce accurate GPS systems. Instrumentally, it's correct to something like twenty decimal places. But epistemologically and psychologically, it is not available to most of our population.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Mean
Universe
Vision
Copy Quote
I don't know of any science writing going on in women's magazines, unless you count medical stories about things like breast cancer. I still think there's a huge problem about how we can actively engage a wider range of women. I'm not saying women must be a separate audience - I'm just responding to the reality that the majority of people who do read science magazines are male. That's not a value judgment; it's a statistical fact.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Cancer
Reality
Writing
Copy Quote
Seeing and playing with physical objects can enable access to symbolic ideas. When I studied physics and math at university it was all done through equations and textbooks whereas artists go to art school and start making stuff; they fling paint at the walls, they dance and bash things together with giant bits of metal. Our society has come to think of science as being a very abstractified thing, and art as being a materialized thing.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Art
School
Wall
Copy Quote
One way to think about a pure hyperbolic surface is that it's the geometric opposite of a sphere. If you look at a sphere, the curvature is the same everywhere, as opposed to, say, an egg, which clearly does not curve the same everywhere. This is what makes spheres geometrically important. Mathematically speaking, a sphere has positive curvature and a hyperbolic surface has negative curvature, but both have constant curvature everywhere.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Important
Negative
Thinking
Copy Quote
Wave particle duality is a core feature of our world. Or rather, we should say, it is a core feature of our mathematical descriptions of our world. But what is critical to note here is that, however ambiguous our images, the universe itself remains whole and is manifestly not fracturing into schizophrenic shards. It is this tantalizing wholeness and the thing itself that drives physicists onward like an eternally beckoning light that seems so teasingly near. It is always out of reach.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Light
Our World
Wave
Copy Quote
I have an abiding interest in how ordinary people produce knowledge, and what it means for individuals to know the world. I thought I'd be a theoretical physicist because I love physicists' views of the world - I find general relativity and quantum theory thrilling - but I have always felt uneasy with the idea of an Ultimate Truth. One of the functions of science is to help us instrumentally; it helps us to build things like microchips and GPS satellites. But another function of science in the modern world is to help us feel "at home in the universe".
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Home
Mean
People
Copy Quote
For ten years, I wrote regular columns about science for women's magazines, and to my knowledge I'm the only person in the world who can say that. This has no kudos in either the science-writing world or the academic world, but it's one of the most challenging things I've ever done. It's much harder to write about cosmology for a magazine like Vogue than for the New York Times, which I've also written for, because you have to imagine that on the page opposite there'll be an advertisement for eyeliner, or an article about the latest trends in skirt length.
Margaret Wertheim / Writer
Challenges
Done
Writing
Copy Quote

Related Writer Authors

Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Oscar Wilde
Writer
Monday, Oct 16, 1854
Friday, Nov 30, 1900
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Writer
Thursday, Aug 28, 1749
Thursday, Mar 22, 1832
Zoltan Istvan
Writer
Zoe Valdes
Writer
Saturday, May 02, 1959
Zlata Filipović
Writer
Wednesday, Dec 03, 1980
Zitkala-Sa
Writer
Tuesday, Feb 22, 1876
Wednesday, Jan 26, 1938
Ziauddin Sardar
Writer
Wednesday, Oct 31, 1951
Zelig Pliskin
Writer
Zan Perrion
Writer
Saturday, Jul 02, 1966
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Writer
Yusuf Idris
Writer
Thursday, May 19, 1927
Thursday, Aug 01, 1991
Young-Ha Kim
Writer
Monday, Nov 11, 1968
Yoshiki Nakamura
Writer
Tuesday, Jun 17, 1969
Yoko Ogawa
Writer
Friday, Mar 30, 1962

View All Writer Quotes

Top Authors

Oprah Winfrey
Media Proprietor
Friday, Jan 29, 1954
Bob Marley
Singer
Tuesday, Feb 06, 1945
Monday, May 11, 1981
Jordan Peterson
Psychologist
Epictetus
Philosopher
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 21, 1772
Friday, Jul 25, 1834
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philologist
Tuesday, Oct 15, 1844
Saturday, Aug 25, 1900
Chanakya
Teacher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Tyler, The Creator
Rapper
Wednesday, Mar 06, 1991
Vincent Van Gogh
Painter
Wednesday, Mar 30, 1853
Tuesday, Jul 29, 1890
Carl Sagan
Astronomer
Friday, Nov 09, 1934
Friday, Dec 20, 1996
Winston Churchill
Former Prime Minister Of The United Kingdom
Monday, Nov 30, 1874
Sunday, Jan 24, 1965
Sun Tzu
Strategist
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Isaac Newton
Physicist
Sunday, Jan 04, 1643
Monday, Mar 31, 1727
Michael Jordan
Basketball Player
Sunday, Feb 17, 1963
Billy Graham
Evangelist
Thursday, Nov 07, 1918

View All Authors

Margaret Wertheim Quotes - Page 1

App & Tools

Related Writer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Writer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page