I had long planned to start a foundation. I wanted to do something with long-range benefit to humanity. Starting a business and making a lot of money doesn't make for a fulfilling life.

I used to ski across the vast white expanses of a quiet and lonely mountaintop. In the stillness and solitude... I pondered the mysteries of the universe, the planet, nature and of man. I'm still pondering.

As we gain more knowledge about materials and processes in the universe, that could open up benefits that we can't even imagine. But you have to be willing to fund science without knowledge of the benefits.

Basic research is to work at the very edge, the very border of, of knowledge, and move that border forward. You look and look for new secrets, and you don't know where it's going to lead you.

I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

All science is based on models, and every scientific model comprises three distinct stages: statement of well-defined hypotheses; deduction of all the consequences of these hypotheses, and nothing but these consequences; confrontation of these consequences with observed data.

Spiderman was my favorite comic book character growing up. I'm a geek, so I love the fact Peter Parker is into science. And I gravitate towards short guys. I'm 5' 9"" now, but in junior high, I got picked on because I was 4' 8"".

It was clear to me from the start that I would need to combine both a medical degree with a research qualification, to keep at the cutting edge of medical science and technology.