Margaret Wertheim

Activist, Artist, Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Environmentalist, Idea generator, Scientist, Single, Writer/Editor

Margaret Wertheim is founder and director of the Institute For Figuring in Los Angeles. The IFF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creative public engagement with science, mathematics and engineering. At TED 2009 Margaret gave a talk about her work at the intersection of science and art. The IFF's mission is to engage audiences with scientific and mathematical themes by highlighting the beauty inherent in these fields. At its venue in Chinatown, LA, the Institute curates exhibitions, and hosts workshops and lectures about topics ranging from physics and cosmology, to biology and geometry. In addition, the IFF collaborates with museums and galleries around the world to create innovative public science programming. We have worked with the Hayward Gallery (London), the Science Gallery (Dublin), the New Children's Museum (San Diego) , USC and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (Washington DC). The IFF's "Crochet Coral Reef Project" is now the largest participatory art+science endeavor in the world. By engaging communities in the act of making their own coral reefs, the Crochet Reef project highlights the devastating effects of global warming on marine ecosystems. Local community-based Reefs have been made in more than 25 cities around the world, including New York, London, Sydney, Riga and Cape Town. More than 3 million people have seen the resulting exhibitions. In 2011, for her work on the Crochet Reef project, Margaret was awarded the Theo Westenberger Award for Women of Excellence, from the Autry National Center. The prize is given to honor a living female artist. The IFF's work at the forefront of science+art is an outgrowth of Margaret's career as a science writer. As a journalist, she has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and many others. For 10 years in her native Australia, she wrote monthly science columns for women's magazines, including Australian Vogue, and throughout her career has been a pioneer in communicating science to women. Trained as a physicist, she is the author of "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace", a history of space from Dante to the internet; and "Physics on the Fringe" about the geniuses and mavericks who invent alternative theories of the universe.

- Science+art. Public science engagement.

- Getting people to "play" with ideas. Just as we have "think tanks", so we need "play tanks" - organizations and places that encourage playful engagement between different realms of thought.

Art + Science, Participatory community-based art-work, Public science engagement

In 2009 I gave a TED Talk about my Crochet Coral Reef project, which is now the largest participatory science+art endeavor in the world. The talk has been watched by 420,000 people and translated into 19 languages, including Arabic and Chinese. The talk has helped to inspire communities all over the world to crochet huge beautiful coral reef installations as a communal artistic response to this environmental catastrophe. Local community reefs have now been made in the USA, UK, Australia, England, Ireland, Germany, Latvia, South Africa and elsewhere. These installations are exhibited at major museums and galleries such as the Smithsonian. Through my TED talk, people all over the planet have learned about the devastating effects of global warming on living reefs, which are now in danger of disappearing completely. In 2013 I'll be working at NYU in Abu Dhabi to create the first Middle East Crochet Reef exhibition.