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

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.

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.

So, that’s my intention to focus my efforts there and I hope I will be able to do so.

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.

There are many, many books I’ve read and I think this is quite naïve actually because we all just try to uncover something.

I built on the efforts of a previous scientist, others will build on the work I’m doing and if I look at the whole scope from chemistry to biology to physics, it’s just the list is too long to mention just one and it’s not fair to the others.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have reached a place in my life where I need to sit down and say, ‘Well, what do I do? What’s best for me?’ I need to look into options for the future.

I’m very competitive by nature. And I like to be the underdog – It’s the best way to win. To come from behind and win is a great feeling!

One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a ‘binge’ writer – like a binge drinker. I go on binges.

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.

It’s a job to me, basically. I’m not trying to be the best fighter in the world or nothing like that. I don’t come in trying to think I am the best fighter. I don’t care about none of that. It’s just a job to me.

I think authenticity and being yourself is always, without a doubt, the best plan of action.

I can only control my own performance. If I do my best, then I can feel good at the end of the day.