Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing.

Tarcher 1980) the seminal work that earned her a lasting global reputation.

She eventually earned numerous honorary degrees served on the board of directors of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and befriended such diverse figures of influence as inventor and theorist Buckminster Fuller spiritual author Ram Dass Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine and billionaire Ted Turner. Ferguson's work also influenced Vice President Al Gore who participated in her informal network while a senator and later met with her in the White House. Marilyn Ferguson (April 5 1938 in Grand Junction Colorado – October 19 2008) was an American author editor and public speaker best known for her 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy and its affiliation with the New Age Movement in popular culture.