When they called me with the Nobel call from Secretary General of the Swedish Academy it was twenty minutes to six and he said well that was well hope I’m not disturbing you but I am the Secretary General of the Swedish Academy.
AHMED ZEWAILSo, that’s my intention to focus my efforts there and I hope I will be able to do so.
More Ahmed Zewail Quotes
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Of course you can imagine I was frozen in time when he said that but then he made a very famous statement, something to the effect that this is the last 20 minutes of peace of your life.
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If you like, there is a Guinness time. The reason for that it’s fundamental. It is not that we have to keep shortening the time. It turns out all molecular and biological systems have speeds of the atoms move inside them.
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There is a danger one has to really be knowing much more because you can’t be too narrow on science.
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I came from Egypt and I owe Egypt a lot to what I am now.
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I do feel quite strongly about this that probably one of the things that unfortunately this age now to get a Nobel Prize is to really use part of it to help the young people get excited about science.
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Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.
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Human resources are just tremendous in Egypt but we need the science base.
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Electrons and possibly x-rays to be able to get the architecture of these molecules, the molecular structures themselves, of very complex biological systems. That’s the ultimate goal.
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But the universe at large is full of questions that we still don’t know anything about and there will be always young people brilliant who are going to make new discoveries.
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When I was a child, I thought of my Delta town as the center of the universe, but now I realize how little I know about the universe.
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I do have a concern however, humanity has a great way of adapting and I’m sure scientists of the future, probably after I leave this planet, earth will have a new way of dealing with the internet but I do have a concern in the transition period.
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So, that’s my intention to focus my efforts there and I hope I will be able to do so.
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I thought in my Nobel Lecture I pointed that I was delighted that the Swedish Academy of Science did not quote anything about my current work right now, because the current work that my group is focusing on is actually both the time resolve.
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One of the things I enjoy most is to be left alone with a book.
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For me to sit down here, even as a Nobel Laureate and make a prediction about which science I think that will be a mistake.
AHMED ZEWAIL