Margaret Wertheim

Pythagoras's Trousers

A spirited look at the relationship between physics and religion—and the implications for both sexes.

Here is a fresh, astute social and cultural history of physics, from ancient Greece to our own time. From its inception, Margaret Wertheim shows, physics has been an overwhelmingly male-dominated activity; she argues that gender inequity in physics is a result of the religious origins of the enterprise.

Pythagoras' Trousers is a highly original history of one of science's most powerful disciplines. It is also a passionate argument for the need to involve both women and men in the process of shaping the technologies from the next generation of physicists.

"Fascinating. . . . A delight to read, and highly informative."—Keith Devlin, Nature

"Smart, bold, and provocative. . . . Sure to evoke even more interest than it does controversy." —Evelyn Fox Keller, professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Reflections on Gender and Science

"Remarkable. . . . A fascinating journey through the intellectual history that has shaped our current post-modern, scientific, and religious culture." —J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Princeton Theological Seminary

"[An] immensely accessible tour. . . . How the physics lab became another Vatican with a no-girls-allowed sign on its door." —Susan Faludi, author of Backlash