 Wertheim lectures around the globe promoting science within a social justice context.In 2003, Wertheim and her twin sister Christine, faculty member of the Department of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts, founded the Institute For Figuring, an organisation based in Los Angeles that promotes the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.The Institute proposes that people can interact directly with mathematical and scientific ideas via material construction methods (such a crochet and paper folding), not simply via abstract equations and formulas.