Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars

“Pythagoras' Trousers” explores physics' and maths' historical conflation with priestly and theological pursuits (busting up the science vs religion myth) and also shows how it is the legacy of patriarchal structures borrowed from religious culture that is the source of gender inequality within the disciplines.

As an active science journalist, historian, and advocate of women in the sciences, it is a shame that Margaret Wertheim eschews touching on the history of the sciences outside of a Western lens. This book could have been even better if it examined how the power dynamics in modern physics and maths are also a legacy of eurocentrism and European imperialism as well as the dominance of the Church and aristocracy.

Nevertheless Wertheim shatters some longstanding myths about famous scientific figures such as Galileo and Newton, and also shines a light on the stories of some very sadly forgotten female scientists such as Lise Meitner, Maria Agnesi, Laura Bassi, Maria Winkelmann, and Christine of Pisan.

Although written in the 90s, this history of the disciplines of physics and mathematics in the West remains a pertinent and fascinating account of how gender and religion have intersected with the sciences.