Margaret Wertheim is a science writer and exhibition curator. She is the author ofPythagoras’ Trousers,a history of the relationship between physics and religion;The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet;and the forthcoming Physics on the Fringe, about “outsider science.” Wertheim has written for theNew York Times, theLos Angeles Times, The Guardian, TLSand many other publications. From 2000-2005, she wrote the “Quark Soup” column for theLA Weekly. She has written and directed a dozen television documentaries, including Catalyst, a six-part series for ABC Australia on science and technology, aimed at teenage girls. In 2003,Wertheim founded the Institute for Figuring, to enhance “the public understanding of the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.” A recent major project is the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, which was exhibited in fall 2010 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
photo: Greg Henry/Visages