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.
AHMED ZEWAILI 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.
AHMED ZEWAILIf 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.
AHMED ZEWAILThink about the whole world of biological complex sciences. We still don’t understand the way a protein folds the way it does.
AHMED ZEWAILAlthough the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious – but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance.
AHMED ZEWAILSo, 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.
AHMED ZEWAILI am not one of the new media experts working all the time with my computers and the PowerPoint’s and things of that sort.
AHMED ZEWAILWomen 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.
AHMED ZEWAILInvest in basic research and recruit the best minds.
AHMED ZEWAILFor 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 ZEWAILI think the Nobel Prize helps for a number of reasons. Number one, if I can be frank, there is these people will feel by getting a Nobel Prize that I’m one of them, that it is possible to contribute on the world map of science and technology.
AHMED ZEWAILAnd 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.
AHMED ZEWAILI 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.
AHMED ZEWAILEverybody 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.
AHMED ZEWAILI came from Egypt and I owe Egypt a lot to what I am now.
AHMED ZEWAILWe still don’t understand how the big bang and evolving all the way to the human species and so on. So all of this is going to be a very, very exciting to the new people.
AHMED ZEWAILI found with my students they don’t necessarily look at journals any more, but they print right away from the internet what’s relevant to what’s he doing you see.
AHMED ZEWAIL