Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem.

I was never very good at exams, having a poor memory and finding the examination process rather artificial, and there never seemed to be enough time to follow up things that really interested me.

It has been a privilege to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to see how it might help mankind in more practical ways.

I have an idealistic view of science as a liberalising and progressive force for humanity.

Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem.

My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur.

Ever since Sir Isaac Newton's times, scientists have worked in the same sort of way: They show a great respect for experiment and observation, They don't cherry pick data, They take a skeptical approach to what they do. And then scientists work together to get a consensus as to what should be believed And that generates very reliable knowledge and that reliable knowledge drives innovation