“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.”

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious – but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance.

So, I’m an old fashioned still in this regard but these are the moment where I really can be creative, if I am, to be left alone with just a book and piece of paper and to be thinking.

I don’t know all the reasons for these achievements, but I know that I love what I do and I have never wanted to rest on my laurels.

I am not one of the new media experts working all the time with my computers and the PowerPoint’s and things of that sort.

We don’t work like the best basketball player and the best musician and so on. Science is a collective effort.

Invest in basic research and recruit the best minds.

As a child, I thought I was immortal, but now I recognize how limited a time we all have. As a child, success meant scoring A on every exam, but now I take it to mean good health, close family and friends, achieve- ments in my work, and helping others.

I want to really focus on doing this two things I really would like to focus on science and the excitement of science and to help with science.

One of the things I enjoy most is to be left alone with a book.

There is a danger one has to really be knowing much more because you can’t be too narrow on science.

I came from Egypt and I owe Egypt a lot to what I am now.

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.

Perhaps the most valuable thing he taught me (his father) was that there is no contradiction between devotion to work and enjoyment of life and people

The fastest possible speeds are determined by their molecular vibrations and this speeds is about a kilometre per second.

And the other thing also which I’m hoping for is that the government in Egypt is willing and interested in promoting science and technology and this is an ideal time now to be able to do something.

Everybody thinks some times that science is done as a master plan and that somebody like me came from Mars and figured out everything and so on, but that’s really not the way it worked.

It is funny, I don’t feel old enough to give advice… But with the advisers you trust, you better listen to them. It may be bad news but that’s the only way you’re going to improve.