Pythagoras's Trousers

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.

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

Margaret Wertheim is a science journalist and commentator and author of the book Pythagoras' Trousers.