Matilde Marcolli

“The general discourse of scientists about science is marred by beliefs of the Ancient Greeks in the kalos kai agathos: that which is beautiful must also be good, and conversely. This leads inevitably to portraits of scientists as cartoonish heroes: the more profound and significant the science, ... In fact what is truly heroic about science is the fact that it does uncover beautiful truths about the universe despite the ugliness and brutality of the human beings involved.”

“Violence, bullying, and intimidation exist and are practiced on a daily basis within the mathematical community, and there is a widespread "culture of cruelty" among its practitioners ...”

“The physicists' approach to the equivalence of Seiberg-Witten and Donaldson theory is based on Witten's interpretation of Donaldson's theory as a twisted supersymmetric Quantum Field Theory ... and on the concept of electro-magnetic duality.”