Think about the whole world of biological complex sciences. We still don't understand the way a protein folds the way it does.

Invest in basic research and recruit the best minds.

When they called me with the Nobel call from Secretary General of the Swedish Academy it was twenty minutes to six and he said well that was well hope I'm not disturbing you but I am the Secretary General of the Swedish Academy. Of course you can imagine I was frozen in time when he said that but then he made a very famous statement, something to the effect that this is the last 20 minutes of peace of your life.

I built on the efforts of a previous scientist, others will build on the work I'm doing and if I look at the whole scope from chemistry to biology to physics, it's just the list is too long to mention just one and it's not fair to the others.

Syria is the proud heir of an ancient civilization that has a unique spectrum of minorities that encompasses Muslims and Christians of various denominations. There are at least ten such ethnic and religious groups.

I am not one of the new media experts working all the time with my computers and the PowerPoint's and things of that sort. So, I'm an old fashioned still in this regard but these are the moment where I really can be creative, if I am, to be left alone with just a book and piece of paper and to be thinking.

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.