Margaret Geller

“When I won the MacArthur, I didn't receive a different amount of money than the men did.”

“A family living at the poverty level is unlikely to be able to afford a computer at home. Even with a computer, access to the Internet is another significant expense. A child might borrow a book from a public library; but it is not possible to take a computer home.”

“I never had a single female professor throughout my whole education, from the beginning of university to the end. Even all the books were about men; I never really liked reading books about the history of science, and I never really understood why.”

“I had a great deal of confidence when I graduated from Berkeley. I had almost none when I was at Princeton. After a while, when people tell you you can't do something because you're a woman, you begin to believe maybe they're right.”

“It's a matter of the heart... I take teaching at Harvard very seriously and supervision of my students very seriously. Harvard should have a bona fide commitment to me.”

“There's something really beautiful about science, that human beings can ask these questions and can answer them. You can make models of nature and understand how it works.”

“One of the great challenges of modern cosmology is to discover what the geometry of the universe really is.”

“The United States is a leader across a broad range of scientific disciplines. Our technological prowess is part of our greatness as a nation. Sadly, among the rich industrialized nations, we also lead by a substantial margin in the rate of poverty among children.”

“The actions of the University in my case make it abundantly clear that the Administration's rhetoric about Harvard's desire to attract and retain the most distinguished women in the world is empty.”

“Hunger, inadequate medical care, poor housing, and inferior schools are enemies of the sense of wonder. It is easier and less expensive in the long run to prevent a loss of imagination by providing adequate nutrition, housing, medical care, and schooling than it is to try to restore that loss.”

“I didn't know what kinds of questions to ask in mathematics. In physics, I could see there were things that were known and things that weren't.”

“There are things done under the name of science which are ridiculous. But there is also stuff done which sounds funny but is really serious.”

“When we look out into space, we're looking back in time; the light from a galaxy a billion light-years away, for instance, will take a billion years to reach us. It's an amazing thing. The history is there for us to see. It's not mushed up like the geologic record of Earth. You can just see it exactly as it was.”

“At least in part, people are attracted to subjects where they can identify at a basic level with the people who do it. The extraordinary aesthetic of the natural world is not obvious to someone who never leaves the inner city. Appreciation of the elegance and power of physical law is an acquired taste.”