Margaret Geller Quotes

#1. 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.

Margaret Geller

#2. 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.

Margaret Geller

#3. 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.

Margaret Geller

#4. When people on airplanes ask me what I do, I used to say I was a physicist, which ended the discussion. I once said I was a cosmologist, but they started asking me about makeup, and the title 'astronomer' gets confused with astrologer. Now I say I make maps.

Margaret Geller

#5. 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.

Margaret Geller

#6. 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.

Margaret Geller

#7. One of the great challenges of modern cosmology is to discover what the geometry of the universe really is.

Margaret Geller

#8. 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.

Margaret Geller

#9. 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.

Margaret Geller

#10. 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.

Margaret Geller

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

Margaret Geller

#12. 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.

Margaret Geller

#13. 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.

Margaret Geller