In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement.

It is a remarkable honor to receive a Nobel Prize, because it not only recognizes discoveries, but also their usefulness to the advancement of fundamental science.

The Department of Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins was founded and directed by Tom Pollard, an engaging young scientist with remarkable energy and enthusiasm.

My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins, and as members of our local Boy Scout troop.

My goal was to develop into an independent research scientist studying clinical problems at the laboratory bench, but I felt that postgraduate residency training in internal medicine was necessary.

We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement.

Following my junior year in high school, I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber, a young language teacher from Roosevelt.

Our lab had always refrained from keeping our studies secret.

The long, cold Minnesota winters instilled in me a fascination for exotic far off places; I aspired toward a career in tropical diseases and world health problems.

Johns Hopkins introduced me to two defining events in my life: commitment to biomedical research and meeting my future wife, Mary.

Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota, then Oxford College in Minnesota, and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee, where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling, who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry.

Every cell in our body is primarily water. But the water doesn't just sit in the cell, it moves through it in a very organized way. The process occurs rapidly in tissues that have these aquaporins or water channels.

I grew up in Minnesota. Four generations of my father's people are buried there.

In science, one should use all available resources to solve difficult problems. One of our most powerful resources is the insight of our colleagues.

Mother had to support herself at age 18 because it was during the depression and when my grandfather lost the farm and there was no place for her; she worked as an assistant to a maid.

Natural selection is not an inflammatory phrase; evolution is.

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this.

Now in the 21st century, the boundaries separating chemistry, physics, and medicine have become blurred, and as happened during the Renaissance, scientists are following their curiosities even when they run beyond the formal limits of their training.

Often times the public school teachers are ridiculed or they are made to feel inferior but this is really undeserved.

So, my advice to young scientists is, think critically about your work; probably don't blab unnecessarily.

Until 1985, when my lab found the protein they are made of, aquaporins hadn't yet been identified. There had been a controversy in biology for more than 100 years about how water moved through cells.

Water is commonly regarded as the 'solvent of life,' since our bodies are 70% water. All other vertebrates, invertebrates, microbes, and plants are also primarily water. The organization of water within biological compartments is fundamental to life, and the aquaporins serve as the plumbing systems for cells.

Well, all life forms are dependent upon water.

Well, my take was people of Minnesota, these are good people. They're in many ways more generous than other parts of the country. They're better educated than other parts of the country.

While the lab plays an enormous role, research is also influenced by inner peace of mind and one's family environment, depending on what stage of one's life and career a scientist is at.

Written in 1895, Alfred Nobel's will endowed prizes for scientific research in chemistry, physics, and medicine. At that time, these fields were narrowly defined, and researchers were often classically trained in only one discipline. In the late 19th century, knowledge of science was not a requisite for success in other walks of life.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

I knew I wanted to act, and I was really driven, so I kept going for it. We moved to L.A. full-time when I was 8 or 9.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

I'm a 7 o'clock act. My people want to go to a show, a dinner and then go home and go to bed.

For me, romance isn't an over-the-top act. It's someone offering to help and to support me. Or if that person thinks I'm making the wrong decision, he'll tell me. I want him to be honest, because being that honest takes a lot of guts.

I want more children but for the next three years I want to act.

I have to say that it's very few countries that are willing to look back at its past and apologize for its act, or make amends for its act, as the United States had one.

I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war... to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism.

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

My kids act all the time and it's exactly what I used to do.

After the magical act accomplished by Joyce with Ulysses, perhaps we are getting away from it.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

I went to my last three years of high school in New Jersey. I just wanted to act, you know?

Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.