Margaret Wertheim

Who is Margaret Wertheim?

Margaret Wertheim is a science writer and the author of books on the cultural history of physics.

Wertheim is the author of three books that collectively consider 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 and religion. The second, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, charts the history of scientific thinking about space from Dante to the Internet. The third book in this series, Physics on the Fringe, looks at the idiosyncratic world of "outsider physicists" such as Jim Carter, people with little or no scientific training who develop their own alternative theories of the universe.

As a journalist, Wertheim has contributed to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and is a contributing editor to Cabinet magazine, the international arts and culture quarterly. From 2001 to 2005, she wrote the "Quark Soup" science column for the LA Weekly, sister paper to the Village Voice.