I always looked at myself as a physicist learning new tricks by looking at nature.

I was always fascinated by how things work and learning about them.

One simply runs out of energy as you get old. One doesn't take on new tasks of exploration because it takes an extended period of intense thinking and working on it, and that becomes impractical.

The sun is the primary puzzle in the universe.

As more girls get basic schooling, larger numbers will move up the educational ladder - some to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. That's important because workplaces around the world, especially in many developing and emerging-market countries, are becoming more automated, favouring workers with technical skills.

My own ideas on the mechanism of catalytic phenomena were very different from those at one time commonly held, ideas which I no doubt owed to the influence of the illustrious teacher who had guided my first steps in chemistry nearly twenty years before - I refer, of course, to Berthelot.

I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.

My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically - and destructively - demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.