My father was not only a planetary scientist and a great popularizer of science, but he thought very deeply about the world. He was a scholar, he studied history. He taught a class in critical thinking, and he was very, very aware of the directions we might go.

Dad was a difference maker. He reached out to people. He took them by the awe and wonder we feel over the most important questions we can think to imagine. He pulled them away from blind faith, away from pseudoscience, toward a deeper, richer understanding of the universe.

Life in space is impossible,' we're warned, and amidst the hypnotic beauty of these heavens, we become painfully aware of what a hostile environment space is, how unforgiving, how unsympathetic to human desires.

Astonishingly powerful and poignant, 'Gravity' is the rarest of rares: a space survival film informed by a genuine reverence for the awe-inspiring cosmos we inhabit.

I committed a cardinal sin as a kid. I never spoke, and my mother thought there was something seriously wrong with me. A silent child is regarded as a problem in Ireland, and I just read all the time.

You always draw inspiration from your family or your parents if they've proven to be inspirational. My mother is someone who's always been inspirational to me.

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.

While the lab plays an enormous role, research is also influenced by inner peace of mind and one's family environment, depending on what stage of one's life and career a scientist is at.