Chapter 13: Professor Marie-Louise Nosch

Extract:

“Until recently, Marie-Louise Nosch was head of the Center for Textile Research (CTR), which has its home at the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen. Throughout history, textiles have influenced numbers, mathematical structure, the language’s metaphors (just think about the thread of life, spin, fabric, and web) and the written language. The word comes from the Latin textus, which means something that was webbed.”

»The whole idea about clothes and costumes originally comes from taking someone’s skin and dressing humans. This is why archaeologists can see that once humans started spinning – something that is actually a clear straightforward idea, because threads go right-angled with each other – then they started spinning toward the form of skin, because for thousands of years skin has been the basic form you dress in. And it went on like this for a long time before people realized that you can just make it square and cut it. So, everything is somehow intertwined, ironically. «

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“According to Marie-Louise Nosch, the people who create excellent research are distinguished by being extremely professional and talented and extremely productive. They get things done and are convincing in what they do. These are people capable of moving out of their comfort zone, creating new collaborations and staying intellectually curious. These are the people who raise questions such as: “Maybe it is actually the other way around?” And they are also the people who make the observations that no one else has made, and they are able to make a difference. Marie-Louise Nosch works on developing young researchers’ talent. She believes that, to a certain extent, you can teach talented people certain things, but some basic elements have to be present.”

You can read the whole portrait of Professor Marie-Louise Nosch below (in Danish) by downloading the chapter below.