Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do.

I went to school with butterflies of fear every day for years - from primary school onwards - not just worried about being bullied by classmates, but by teachers.

A young woman in her teens has about 300,000 eggs in her ovaries. By the time she is menopausal, none are left.

Having a child is arguably the most important thing you do in life.

It's extraordinary to think that if you walked into a room and said you had never heard of Hamlet, you would be regarded as a Philistine. But you could walk into the same room and say, 'I don't know what a proton is,' and people would just laugh and say, 'Why should you know?'

You can now modify the genes of large animals, and the largest animal we are concerned with is the human.

I did not study science at school until I was 13, when I was totally turned on by a seemingly dreary old teacher who suddenly, unannounced, manufactured a huge explosion in the middle of a totally boring monologue. From then on, all of his class wanted to make explosions.