A strong sense of being loved and a hopefulness for their life ahead.
What would you like to leave your children?
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What is the thing you are best at that nobody watching can see?
Craft & work
Question
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Daily life
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What are you most proud of?
Identity & self
Question
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Time & hindsight
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
But look at what we can do at a place like Caltech, with scientists from the Middle East to Europe to Asia to America.
Heidi Aspaturian, Caltech Oral History Project, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, 2015 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 54 →A healthy planet.
Good values and a lot of money.
A sense of the world being full of possibility and it being in their hands to make it a better one.
More from Ahmed Zewail
View profile →But I had decided that science is really the thing…It is what I wanted. Exactly.
Recorded
Heidi Aspaturian, Caltech Oral History Project, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, 2015
source ↗
I like simplicity. To me, this is very, very important, whether I am dealing with science or dealing with people.
Recorded
Heidi Aspaturian, Caltech Oral History Project, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, 2015
source ↗
Arriving in the States, I had the feeling of being thrown into an ocean. The ocean was full of knowledge, culture, and opportunities, and the choice was clear: I could either learn to swim or sink. The culture was foreign, the language was difficult, but my hopes were high. I did not speak or write English fluently, and I did not know much about western culture in general, or American culture in particular.
Recorded
Laureate-written autobiography for Les Prix Nobel, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 December 1999
source ↗
It was also evident to me that if you really want to achieve and do well in American society, you have to work, and work hard…You have to work, you have to work.
Recorded
Heidi Aspaturian, Caltech Oral History Project, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, 2015
source ↗
I’m so pleased, because Caltech’s name is there as the pioneer of this whole technology…I’m proud of them.
Recorded
Heidi Aspaturian, Caltech Oral History Project, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, 2015
source ↗
One of them—I forgot the others— that I thought was really interesting is, Don’t take yourself too seriously. And I believe in that—I think I believe in that.
Recorded
Heidi Aspaturian, Caltech Oral History Project, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, 2015
source ↗
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