Nature doesn't feel compelled to stick to a mathematically precise algorithm; in fact, nature probably can't stick to an algorithm. Margaret Wertheim More Quotes by Margaret Wertheim More Quotes From Margaret Wertheim 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 done challenges writing 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 math mean children 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 goal challenges thinking 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 genes university women science