I also became interested in chemistry and gradually accumulated enough test tubes and other glassware to do chemical experiments, using small quantities of chemicals purchased from a pharmacy supply house.

He told me that Francis Crick and Jim Watson had solved the structure of DNA, so we decided to go across to Cambridge to see it. This was in April of 1953.

During this period, I became interested in how the new techniques of cloning and sequencing DNA could influence the study of genetics and I was an early and active proponent of the Human Genome Sequencing Project.

There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.

The modern computer hovers between the obsolescent and the nonexistent.

I completed the first three years of primary school in one year and was admitted to the local school the age of six directly into the fourth year, some two years younger than all my contemporaries.

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.

In 1995, I founded The Molecular Sciences Institute with a gift from the Philip Morris Company where I hoped that we could create an environment where young people could pursue science in an atmosphere of harmonious purpose and high intellectual challenge.

In my second year, after moving to the Medical School, I began the courses of Anatomy and Physiology. I had begun to see that I was interested in cells and their functions.

I also became interested in chemistry and gradually accumulated enough test tubes and other glassware to do chemical experiments, using small quantities of chemicals purchased from a pharmacy supply house.

So that's when I saw the DNA model for the first time, in the Cavendish, and that's when I saw that this was it. And in a flash you just knew that this was very fundamental.

The moment I saw the model and heard about the complementing base pairs I realized that it was the key to understanding all the problems in biology we had found intractable - it was the birth of molecular biology.

Living most of the time in a world created mostly in one's head, does not make for an easy passage in the real world.

Many have gone on to do important scientific work but all remember those wonderful times when we and our science were young and our excitement in meeting new challenges knew no bounds.

I lived at home and I cycled every morning to the railway station to travel by train to Johannesburg followed by a walk to the University, carrying sandwiches for my lunch and returning in the evening the same way.

I went in with Jack and Leslie, into this room that was lined with brick, and there on the side I can remember very clearly was this small model with plates for the bases - the original model with everything screwed together.

There are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses throughout the entire earth yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth.

I studied music; I studied theater. I went to school for it, so I kind of treat it in that manner, that whether or not I can hang out, I've always been the one to go in my room and chill.

Comedy to me is all about the bumps and bruises and weird tics.

I make breakfast, which is usually Kellogg's Red Berries or egg whites, and then I go to the gym that's only 10 minutes away.

I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are made for it.

Everyone can do simple things to make a difference, and every little bit really does count.

It was a mistake to think that my views would have been taken on their own terms. It was a mistake to think that my last name wouldn't be a factor.

I've always looked for challenges, and I have found plenty.

I grew up on the tennis court with lots of other kids. There were like 40 kids all afternoon and I was one of the youngest ones, so I always had to chase everybody to keep up.

My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.

I think I draw my inspiration from a lot of conversations that I had with people or my friends and combine them together with my own personal experience.

Let's not confuse traditional behaviours with good manners. The definition of etiquette is gender neutral - it simply means we strive at all times to ensure a person in our company feels at ease.

Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.

While it may be disappointing, I have to confess to people who ask for my insights on the meaning of it all that astronomy doesn't provide any clearly useful data on matters of sin and souls.

If there wasn't any business and it was just strictly basketball, then there would be no issue, it would probably be done by now. But the team has to protect.

When I was 8 years old, I saw 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.

It's a big pay off when I see a woman wearing my stuff. It's really gratifying.

If one introduces the concept of energy of an earthquake then that is a theoretically derived quantity.

I see Mike Tyson as too strong for Spinks.

I like the stories with the historical themes.

It is impossible for human beings not to view something subjectively.

I'm pretty much of a physical actor.

I had those kind of parents where I watched all of these very sophisticated movies: 'Five Easy Pieces', 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'