You should have some time to think and that's very important.

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious - but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance. Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.

Everybody thinks some times that science is done as a master plan and that somebody like me came from Mars and figured out everything and so on, but that's really not the way it worked.

I want to really focus on doing this two things I really would like to focus on science and the excitement of science and to help with science. So, that's my intention to focus my efforts there and I hope I will be able to do so.

When I was a child, I thought of my Delta town as the center of the universe, but now I realize how little I know about the universe. As a child, I thought I was immortal, but now I recognize how limited a time we all have. As a child, success meant scoring A on every exam, but now I take it to mean good health, close family and friends, achieve- ments in my work, and helping others.

If you like, there is a Guinness time. The reason for that it's fundamental. It is not that we have to keep shortening the time. It turns out all molecular and biological systems have speeds of the atoms move inside them, the fastest possible speeds are determined by their molecular vibrations and this speeds is about a kilometre per second.

I thought in my Nobel Lecture I pointed that I was delighted that the Swedish Academy of Science did not quote anything about my current work right now, because the current work that my group is focusing on is actually both the time resolve electrons and possibly x-rays to be able to get the architecture of these molecules, the molecular structures themselves, of very complex biological systems. That's the ultimate goal.