When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.
I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21.
So many of the things I've predicted were technologies that were just sitting right in front of us.
As soon as you go into any biological process in any real detail, you discover it's open-ended in terms of what needs to be found out about it.
A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke.
Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy.
I'm chairing a UNESCO committee on how to improve global Internet communications for science; help third-world people get onto the Net so they can be part of the process.
If you want to solve very complex problems, you will have to end up letting machines work out a lot of the details for themselves, and in ways that we don't understand what they are doing.
If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.
I started on the use of the Internet for scientific communication. Our research group was one of the very first to make really systematic use of it as a way of managing research projects.
We are all very individual. You have to find out what you can do best, and be self-conscious about that.
Try hard to find out what you're good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that.
To have the recognition of your colleagues is great. The public attention is a mixed blessing.
If you wanted to dissect the structure of living cells, genetic analysis was an extremely powerful method, so my interest turned to that.
If it takes you 20 or 25 years to establish yourself in one field, you really ought to be careful not to stray too far.