.jpg)
Margaret Wertheim (born 20 August 1958) is an Australian-born science writer, curator, and artist based in the United States. She is the author of books on the cultural history of physics, and has written about science, including for theNew York Times,Los Angeles Times,Guardian,Aeon andCabinet. Wertheim and her twin sister, Christine Wertheim, are co-founders of theInstitute For Figuring (IFF), a Los Angeles–based non-profit organization through which they create projects at the intersection of art, science and mathematics. Their IFF projects include theirCrochet Coral Reef, which has been shown at the 2019 Venice Biennale,Hayward Gallery (London),Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), and theSmithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. For her work withpublic science engagement, Wertheim won the 2016Klopsteg Memorial Award from theAmerican Association of Physics Teachers and Australia's Scientia Medal (2017).
Wertheim's education includes twobachelor's degrees, aBachelor of Science in pure and applied physics from theUniversity of Queensland and aBachelor of Arts in pure mathematics and computing from theUniversity of Sydney.
Wertheim has been a research associate at the American Natural Museum of Natural History located in New York, and is a fellow at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.[1] She is currently a PhD candidate and researcher atDeakin University. She was the Discovery Fellow (2012-2013) at theUniversity of Southern California, as well as the Vice Chancellor's Fellow (2015) at theUniversity of Melbourne.[2]
Wertheim is the author of a trilogy that considers the role of theoretical physics in the cultural landscape of modern Western society. The first,Pythagoras' Trousers, is a history of the relationship between physics, religion and gender relations. Reviewing the book inThe Independent, Jenny Turner writes that the introduction states the book's argument elegantly and compellingly; but the text disappointed her by losing sight of what Turner thought its most interesting goal, telling how physics has been motivated by "fantasies of universal mastery".[3] The book offered a critique of sexism in science and proposed systemic historical reasons why physics has been so un-open to women since its inception inPythagorean principles 2500 years ago.
The second,The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace,[4] charts the history of scientific thinking about space fromDante to theInternet. The thesis of the book is that our conceptions of human selfhood are intimately entwined with our conceptions of space, and when our concepts of space change so do our views about the "self." In the medieval schema, there were two spaces of being: the physical space of the Earth, planets and stars, and the spiritual domain ofHeaven andHell. Here "man" was conceived as a creature of both body andsoul, each aspect operating within its parallel realm. With the advent of aNewtonian cosmos and its purely physical depiction of space, "man" came to be envisioned as a solely material being. In the 1990s, the coming into being ofcyberspace – to useWilliam Gibson's term – ushered in a claim that this ethereal domain would re-open possibilities for activation of a spiritual side of our selves. Wertheim refutes this claim, and the book offered an early challenge to visions of cyber-utopia. Andrew Leonard, reviewing the book forThe New York Times, calls Wertheim's thesis "ambitious and fascinating."[5] Leonard finds her account of the evolution of physicists' concept of space impressive, but expresses the view that ultimately she loses faith in her thesis of cyberspace as a spiritual realm: even if there is, indeed, something human about a great network of relationships that "cannot be captured by an equation or a telescope".[5] Yet as Britt Elvira Ruitenberg wrote on the website The First Supper, the purpose of the book was not to endorse cyber-spiritualism, but to challenge the very premise, this "dream of a virtual Eden that rapidly vanished away".[6]
The third,Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything,[7][8] looks at the idiosyncratic world of "outsider physicists" such asJim Carter, people with little or no scientific training who develop their own alternative theories of the universe.Freeman Dyson, reviewing the book inThe New York Review of Books, notes that it describes research by amateurs, who "offer an alternative set of visions ... concrete rather than abstract, physical rather than mathematical."[9] The leading character is Jim Carter, a man with an "unshakable belief" in a theory of the whole universe constructed of "endless hierarchies of circlons", circular mechanical objects that reproduce and split like smoke rings.[9] Unknown to Carter, his basic idea that atoms could be explained as subatomic smoke rings had already been proposed in the 1870s by the renowned English physicistWilliam Thomson (laterBaron Kelvin), and the Scottish mathematicianP.G. Tait. Tait and Thomson's theory ofvortex atoms has been called by the historianHelge Kragh "a Victorian theory of everything", and is now regarded as a kind of precursor tostring theory.
As a journalist, Wertheim has written for newspapers in various countries includingThe New York Times,Los Angeles Times,The Guardian,The Daily Telegraph, andDie Zeit.[2] She has written science articles for magazines includingNew Scientist,The Sciences,Cabinet,Aeon,The Australian Review of Books, andAustralian Geographic.[2]
Her work has been included inThe Best American Science Writing 2003, edited byOliver Sacks; andBest Australian Science Writing (2015, 2016, 2018 by Newsouth Press); andBest Writing on Mathematics 2018 (Princeton University Press).[10]
Wertheim has scripted 10 television documentaries, as well as created and co-directed the award-winning[11] seriesCatalyst, a six-part science and technology series for a teenageaudience. She hasproduced several short films, and she wrote and directed the interactive Canadianpublic health programWhat About AIDS (1988), an early use of laser-disc technology. Wertheim lectures around the globe promoting science within asocial justice context.[2]
In 2003, Wertheim and her twin sister Christine, faculty member of the Department of Critical Studies at theCalifornia Institute of the Arts, founded theInstitute For Figuring, an organisation based in Los Angeles that promotes the poetic andaesthetic dimensions of science andmathematics. The Institute proposes that people can interact directly with mathematical and scientific ideas via material construction methods (such a crochet and paper folding), not simply via abstract equations and formulas. IFF is anonprofit organization through which the sisters produce theirCrochet Coral Reef project, an endeavor they created as an artistic response toclimate change and the decimation of theGreat Barrier Reef in their Australian homeland. The project also responds to the problem of oceanic plastic trash. While engaging audiences around the world with these environmental concerns, theCrochet Coral Reef also serves as way to teachnon-Euclidean geometry. The frilly curling shapes of theCrochet Reef are manifestations ofhyperbolic surfaces, the same forms made by living reef organisms. The ability to crochet such forms was discovered in 1997 byDaina Taimiņa, a Cornell University mathematician.[12]
Through their work with IFF, the Wertheim sisters have created exhibitions on scientific and mathematical themes at art galleries and science museums around the world, including the2019 Venice Biennale,Andy Warhol Museum inPittsburgh,[13] theSanta Monica Museum of Art, theHayward Gallery, London,[13]Art Center College of Design inPasadena, California,[13]Machine Project, theMuseum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, theScience Gallery at Trinity College in Dublin,[13]Museum of Arts and Design, theCooper Hewitt inNew York, and theSmithsonian's National Museum of Natural History inWashington, D.C.,.[13] These exhibitions and related public programming make mathematical and scientific concepts accessible to laypeople.
The Wertheim sister'sCrochet Coral Reef project is one of the largestparticipatory art and science endeavors in the world. By creating giantinstallations that mimic livingcoral reefs, crocheted out ofyarn and types ofplastic, and using algorithms inspired byhyperbolic geometry, theproject resides at the intersection of mathematics, science,handicraft,environmentalism and community art practice. The project teaches audiences aboutnon-Euclidean geometry, while also engaging them with the subject ofclimate change and the decimation of reefs due toglobal warming.[14][15]Wertheim’s use of crochet in the piece is largely due to Daina Taimina's discovery of the potential manifestation of the Impossible Hyperbolic Structure within the confines of the medium. The piece pays homage to the female mathematician who used a traditionally women's medium to redefine the course of the study as a whole. She is quoted as saying, "So here, in wool, through a domestic, feminine art, is the proof that the most famous postulate in mathematics is wrong". In this way, the piece not only comments on mathematics and climate change, but also feminism.[16]As of early 2020, more than 10,000 people fromNew York andLondon, toRiga andAbu Dhabi, have actively contributed pieces toCrochet Coral Reef exhibitions in more than 40 cities and countries.[17] More than two million people have seen these shows. In the foreword to theCrochet Coral Reef book,Donna Haraway calls the project "palpable, polymorphous, powerful and terrifyingstitchery". Wertheim was invited to speak about the project in aTed Talk in February 2009.[16] The talk has been transcribed into 22 different languages[18] and has surpassed 1.3 million views on the Ted website.
Since its beginning in 2005,Crochet Coral Reef has expanded into a constellation of individual reefs including aBleached Reef, aToxic Reef made of video-tape and plastic, aBranched Anemone Garden, and a giantCoral Forest – consisting of six large-scale sculptures, three crocheted from yarn and three from plastic. The plastic works are inspired by theGreat Pacific Garbage Patch, a giganticgyre of plastic debris in thePacific Ocean.[19]
Inspired by and working withJeannine Mosely, asoftware engineer andorigami artist, Margaret Wertheim curated a project at theUniversity of Southern California to create a giant model of afractal, constructed from 48,912 business cards. Professors, librarians, local artists, school students, and hundreds ofUSC students all participated in over 3,000 hours of work to complete this object. Discovered by Dr. Mosely in 2006, theMosely snowflake is a cousin of the famousMenger sponge, the first three-dimensional fractal known to mathematicians which was first described byKarl Menger in 1926, and which Wertheim and Mosely also modelled physically at the Institute for Figuring. The Mosely Snowflake Sponge at USC was the first-ever instantiation of this new fractal form, and has since been reproduced by other groups around the world, including inMadagascar. On display at the University of Southern California's Doheny Memorial Library, the completedMosely Snowflake Sponge fractal was constructed out of specially designed business cards coloured in theUSC Trojans' palette of scarlet and gold, and using several geometric designs taken from theOliver Byrne version of Euclid'sElements.[20]
Physics trilogy
Guides and catalogs
the internationally award-winning science series "Catalyst" (made for the ABC)
Quotations related toMargaret Wertheim at Wikiquote| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
.jpg)
