I was raised with this idea of hard work and keeping doors open. To be able to choose what you want to do in the future. That was what we tried to tell our children, too.

I think women who are pretty certainly have an advantage in any field, in any profession. When a girl is born people still say: Oh, I'm glad that she is pretty. They don't look at whether she is intelligent.

In my age group I don't know a single woman who is as successful as I am. I am the total exception. You can be very proud of it. But you are also very isolated.

In systemic searches for embryonic lethal mutants of Drosophila melanogaster we have identified 15 loci which when mutated alter the segmental patterns of the larva. These loci probably represent the majority of such genes in Drosophila. The phenotypes of the mutant embryos indicate that the process of segmentation involves at least three levels of spatial organization: the entire egg as developmental unit, a repeat unit with the length of two segments, and the individual segment.

At the time I finished high school, I was determined to study biology, deeply convinced to eventually be a researcher.

I was always trying to look modest and natural. I don't like women who come into the lab and you see immediately that it took them two hours to dress in the morning.

Everyone thinks I must have been an ace in school. But I didn't work hard, I was lazy. I liked to be lazy. I thought laziness stimulated your imagination.