Margaret Wertheim

Margaret Wertheim – Life, Work, and Ideas

Explore the life of Margaret Wertheim — Australian science writer, curator, and artist blending physics, mathematics, art and culture. Discover her journey, major works, projects like Crochet Coral Reef, and her reflections on science and society.

Introduction

Margaret Wertheim (born August 20, 1958) is an Australian-born science writer, curator, and artist whose work explores the intersections of science, mathematics, and culture. Her writing ranges from history and philosophy of physics to the fringe edges of scientific thought. Through her co-founded Institute For Figuring (with her twin sister Christine), she has also pioneered projects that make mathematical ideas tangible, aesthetic, and socially engaged — most famously the Crochet Coral Reef. Her work invites us to see science not simply as abstract knowledge, but as a lived, poetic, cultural endeavor.

Early Life, Education & Background

Margaret Wertheim was born in Brisbane, Australia, on August 20, 1958.

She pursued rigorous scientific and mathematical training:

• She earned a Bachelor of Science in pure and applied physics at the University of Queensland.

• She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in pure mathematics and computing from the University of Sydney.

Her dual grounding in physics and mathematics provided her with both the technical literacy and the perspective to critique and communicate science in cultural and philosophical contexts.

Over time, she has been affiliated with various institutions: as a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, as a fellow at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and as a researcher and PhD candidate at Deakin University in Australia.

Career & Major Works

Writing & Journalism

Wertheim is best known for her books and essays that examine how science, culture, mathematics, and belief intertwine. Some of her most significant books include:

• Pythagoras’ Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars (1995), which explores historical connections between physics, metaphysics, and gender.

• The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet (1999), tracing how our notions of space evolved culturally from medieval cosmology to digital cyberspace.

• Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons and Alternative Theories of Everything (2011), which examines “outsider scientists” — people outside formal institutions who propose alternative physical theories.

Her essays and articles appear in prominent outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Aeon, Cabinet, and many others.

Beyond books, she has written and directed documentaries and television science programs. For instance, she co-directed Faith and Reason, a PBS documentary exploring science and religion. Catalyst, a six-part science & technology series for adolescents.

Institute For Figuring & Art + Science Projects

In 2003, Margaret and her twin sister Christine founded the Institute For Figuring (IFF) — a non-profit based in Los Angeles devoted to exploring the aesthetic, poetic, and cultural dimensions of mathematics and science.

One of the IFF’s flagship projects is the Crochet Coral Reef, which blends handcraft, mathematics (especially hyperbolic geometry), ecological messaging, and community participation. The installations mimic coral reef forms using crochet and plastic materials — an artistic response to reef decline, ocean plastic pollution, and a pedagogical way to visualize non-Euclidean geometry.

The Crochet Coral Reef has been exhibited internationally — at the Venice Biennale, the Hayward Gallery in London, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, and more.

Other IFF projects include paper folding, fractal constructions (e.g. business card Menger sponges), and community workshops that blend mathematics, craft, and public engagement.

Themes & Approaches

A few central threads run through Margaret Wertheim’s work:

• Science as cultural practice: She treats science not as an isolated objective realm, but as historically, philosophically, and culturally embedded.

• Bridging the abstract and the tangible: Her projects make mathematical ideas (like curvature, hyperbolic surfaces) concrete, tactile, and accessible through craft and art.

• Valuing outsider voices: In Physics on the Fringe, she gives space to alternative theories and to individuals who seek science outside mainstream institutions, raising questions about authority, legitimacy, and imagination in science.

• Environmental and ecological awareness: Through the Crochet Coral Reef and related works, she draws attention to coral bleaching, climate change, and plastic pollution, embedding ecological urgency within mathematical-artistic forms.

Recognition & Awards

Margaret Wertheim has been honored with multiple awards for her science communication and interdisciplinary work:

• Klopsteg Memorial Award (2016) from the American Association of Physics Teachers, recognizing her excellence in bringing physics to broader audiences.

• Scientia Medal (Australia, 2017) for her contributions to public understanding of science.

• Print Journalism Award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences (2006)

• Theo Westenberger Award (2011) from the Autry Museum

Her work has also been included in The Best American Science Writing and Best Australian Science Writing anthologies.

Personal Reflections & Philosophy

Wertheim often frames her work around a dual perspective: that science is both a source of conceptual enchantment (its ideas delight, inspire, provoke), and simultaneously a socially embedded enterprise with politics, power, gender, and culture entangled.

She has said that her goal is not mere popularization, but to open “the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science”, allowing people to engage with scientific ideas in more imaginative, embodied, and critical ways.

Her work also reflects a feminist sensibility: she challenges narratives that science is neutral, objective, or free of human context, especially in relation to gender, power, and who gets to speak science. Pythagoras’ Trousers is one example of how she explores the gendered metaphors and histories embedded in physics.

In interviews and writing, she emphasizes that making science accessible is not about dumbing down, but about creating translations between formal mathematical or physical ideas and human experience — via metaphor, craft, visualization, and narrative.

Selected Quotes

Here are a few insightful statements reflecting Wertheim’s voice and thinking:

“Science is not just a set of abstract propositions — it is a human, cultural practice embedded in philosophy, politics and aesthetics.” “I aim to illuminate both dimensions of science: its conceptual enchantments, and its social embedding.” “Through craft and material engagement, we can bring to life mathematical ideas that resist simplification.” (Paraphrase of her approach in art + science projects)
“The Crochet Coral Reef invites people not simply to look at geometry—but to live it, stitch by stitch.” (Paraphrase of project description and public statements)

Lessons & Legacy

1. Science is human and cultural. Wertheim’s work reminds us that scientific knowledge is shaped by its time, its metaphors, and its social assumptions—not just by sterile experiment.

2. Bridging divides via creativity. Her projects show that art, craft, and community can be portals into mathematics and science, not merely illustrations but generative forms of thinking.

3. Authority is contested. By attending to outsider theories, she highlights how power and exclusion operate even in science — who is allowed to speak, and whose voices are marginalized.

4. Environmental urgency through imagination. The Crochet Coral Reef and related works show how ecological concerns can be mediated through beauty, care, and communal participation.

5. Persistence across disciplines. Wertheim’s career demonstrates how one can weave across disciplines — physics, math, art, writing — without losing coherence of purpose.

Her legacy is that of a boundary-crossing thinker who challenges the divisions between science and art, between expert and public, and between abstraction and materiality.