The objective of producing useful devices has strongly influenced the choice of the research projects with which I have been associated.

A basic truth that the history of the creation of the transistor reveals is that the foundations of transistor electronics were created by making errors and following hunches that failed to give what was expected.

Science fiction writers, when I was a kid, were a big deal.

One of the most exciting aspects of 23andMe is that we're enabling you to watch a revolution unfold live during your lifetime, and I think that the decoding of the genome, in my opinion, is the most fascinating discovery of our lifetime, and you get to be part of it.

I don't know whether it is important to study science at a young age, though current thinking emphasises the need.

Typically, you learn how to cook, but you don't know why. We were looking for a deeper understanding of what was happening to our food as we roasted it, boiled it, grilled it, chopped it, etc. And it turned out, as we began to really say what is cooking, what does it mean to cook, there's a lot of science involved.