Marie Curie is in a class all her own as the first female winner and still the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different science categories. An astounding scientist.

We proved that we could increase laser intensity by orders of magnitude. In fact, CPA led to the most intense laser pulses ever recorded. Our findings changed the world's understanding of how atoms interact with high-intensity light.

We must give scientists the opportunity through funding and time to pursue curiosity-based, long-term, basic-science research.

I was very good at math and physics. And that’s all. I can’t do music, art, so there was not a lot of choice for me. I think people should go with their strength and that was my strength."

The origin of life is one of the great outstanding mysteries of science.

My father said I should become a doctor and do science in my spare time, which in retrospect might not have been a bad idea, but I wasn't interested in taking care of people's ills.

Excellent teachers showered on to us like meteors: Biology teachers holding up human brains, English teachers inspiring us with a personal ideological fierceness about Tolstoy and Plato, Art teachers leading us through the slums of Boston, then back to the easel to hurl public school gouache with social awareness and fury.

Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science.