We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

© NASA, ESA, AND J. COYLE JR. (FOR SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE)

MARIO LIVIO is an internationally known astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of The Golden Ratio, a highly acclaimed book about mathematics and art for which he received the International Pythagoras Prize and the Peano Prize, and also The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved, Is God a Mathematician? and The Accelerating Universe. He writes a regular blog, A Curious Mind, and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Visit the author at www.mariolivio.com.