Margherita Hack

Margherita Hack (12 June 1922 – 29 June 2013) was an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator.

Quotes

• I think you can understand time just by the fact that everything, everything changes. Everything ages. You’re born, you die. The living beings as the objects if they are new, then they become old. Even the stones, even in our Earth, aged four and a half billion years, has changed enormously. So we can define time only thanks to the fact that everything changes.
  • Interview with Euronews' Claudio Rocco in 2011; as quoted in "Science says 'ciao' to Italy's Margherita Hack: the 'lady of the stars'", euronews.com (1 July 2013).

• I’m an atheist in the sense that I do not believe in God, I do not believe in the afterlife. I believe that the soul is our brain. It’s impossible to scientifically prove either that God exists, or that God does not exist. The idea of God does not convince me. I prefer to believe that there is matter and that matter has the properties we observe. … When I pass away, if I meet God, I will tell him I was wrong.
  • Quoted in "Goodbye Margherita Hack, “The Lady of the Stars.”", iitaly.org (1 July 2013).