A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke.

The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus.

Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy.

The central moral issue of science is that we do not have a science of peace and hardly know where to begin in building one.

As soon as you go into any biological process in any real detail, you discover it's open-ended in terms of what needs to be found out about it.

Everybody has to learn for the first time.

I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities.