Without evidence, anything goes. Think about it. Common sense says the sun goes round the Earth. Who agrees with me?

Scientific discoveries matter much more when they're communicated simply and well - if you can't explain your work to the man in the pub, what's the point?

Scientific education is by far the best training for all walks of life because it teaches us how to assess situations critically and react accordingly. It gives us an understanding based on reverence for life-enhancing technologies as well as for life itself.

We live in a world economically, socially, and culturally dependent on science not only functioning well, but being wisely applied.

I had been interested in science from when I was very young, but after a disastrous summer lab experience in which every experiment I tried failed, I decided on graduating from college that I was not cut out to be a scientist.

From an early age, I knew I would become a scientist. It may have been my brother Sam's doing. He interested me in the laws of falling bodies when I was ten and helped my father equip a basement chemistry lab for me when I was fifteen. I became skilled in the synthesis of selenium halides.

I have been described by one of my colleagues as a 'militant agnostic' with my tagline, 'I don't know, and neither do you!' I take this hard-line, fence-sitting position because it is the only position consistent with both my scientific ethos and my conscience.

The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.