Bullying, flakiness, rudeness, lack of humility, being patronising and ungenerous.

Inefficiency. Whiners.

Bullying.

Disrespect. My dad was a toolmaker and worked in a factory all his life, and he felt looked down on, and it really affected him. And so all my life I’ve loathed disrespect and valued respect.

I did not meet Franklin but admired her work and scientific attitude. I did meet Hodgkin and learned a lot from her.

Ultimately, my research was curiosity driven, which kept me active even in low periods.

But you know that there are so many people that are equal to us or better that didn’t get the prize. You cannot go round the whole world and ask “are you better than me?”

Oh ya, I doubted more than expected. I had doubts all the time. The way was extremely, extremely difficult. … At one point I had to describe what I am doing to a person who is a great intellectual but not a scientist, and I told him what we felt is that we are climbing mountains in order to reach the climax – and these mountains are like the Everest, the biggest most difficult to climb – only to find out that there is another mountain waiting behind it to be climbed afterwards. So every climbing was an achievement but there was a bigger problem behind it or above it. I had lots of minutes that I didn't expect, but I thought science in general and this science particularly is worth the effort – even if we would never get the ultimate result.

It is possible to be a good scientist, a good mother and have a family and even bake a cake.

Today, in my opinion, people are more interested in the number of papers and the way of judging people has become much more statistical. Pupils are already doing this right from the beginning. Also, very few people go into basic science, there’s a big thing about making money e.g. biotech. Some people view education as a tool for making money or at least for making a good life, rather than understanding and digging down into something, which was my motivation.