If we ever establish contact with intelligent aliens living on a planet around a distant star ... They would be made of similar atoms to us. They could trace their origins back to the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, and they would share with us the universe's future. However, the surest common culture would be mathematics.

Science isn't just for scientists - it's not just a training for careers.

In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.

The extreme sophistication of modern technology - wonderful though its benefits are - is, ironically, an impediment to engaging young people with basics: with learning how things work.

The 'clean energy' challenge deserves a commitment akin to the Manhattan project or the Apollo moon landing.

Indeed, our everyday world presents intellectual challenges just as daunting as those of the cosmos and the quantum, and that is where 99 per cent of scientists focus their efforts. Even the smallest insect, with its intricate structure, is far more complex than either an atom or a star.

Charles Darwin [is my personal favorite Fellow of the Royal Society]. I suppose as a physical scientist I ought to have chosen Newton. He would have won hands down in an IQ test, but if you ask who was the most attractive personality then Darwin is the one you'd wish to meet. Newton was solitary and reclusive, even vain and vindictive in his later years when he was president of the society.