Tim Hunt

In my own career, I have always tried to treat my colleagues with respect and kindness, whoever they are, and am proud to have developed and mentored the careers of many excellent young scientists who will be tackling tomorrow's biological problems long after I have left the scene.

I had hoped to do a lot more to help promote science in this country and in Europe, but I cannot see how that can happen. I have become toxic. I have been hung to dry by academic institutes who have not even bothered to ask me for my side of affairs.

In the fall of 1961, I went up to Clare College Cambridge to read Natural Sciences, with the intention of becoming a biochemist in the end.

Education and research is national, not E.U., business.

My education started with Latin taught at home by a governess, I can't imagine why, and for some reason I attended the Infants Department of the Oxford High School for Girls before moving to the Dragon School at the dangerous age of 8 or so.

I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt, an important role in it.

At the age of 14, I moved across town to Magdalen College School, Oxford, where science played a much larger role in the curriculum.

I fought for seven years to have creche facilities at the Okinawa Institute of Science of Technology - and was ultimately successful. Less successful have been efforts to get a creche at the new Crick Institute in London, but this is something I will continue to push for.

Anyone can win the Nobel Prize if the scientist works hard on his research subject.

If UCL did offer to reinstate me, it would be churlish of me to refuse, but really, my work there was over.

I certainly don't recognise myself as the horrible sexist portrayed in media reports, and I don't think the women who have worked with me throughout my career do either.