What lies beyond the end of the universe?
“My mother loved mathematics and at high school she did so well in geometry that she had the dream of continuing with her studies at the university. But at that time women were not accepted by universities in Japan, and even if they had been my grandfather would not have allowed her to go for fear that she might miss out on the opportunity to get married. In a way I fulfilled my mother’s dream.” “When I was a child, I would keep asking my family all sorts of questions. ‘Why doesn’t the Moon fall on us?’ ‘What is beyond the furthest star?’ ‘Where does the universe end?’ ‘What is beyond the universe?’ I would lie awake at night thinking about the beginning of time. Curiosity is the scientist’s greatest asset.” Why don’t you try to do both? As a young graduate student, Fumiko Yonezawa had to face the usual handicaps and worries when her boyfriend proposed to her. “My future husband was a student of economics. At that time I saw it as a straight choice: marriage and no physics or physics a
