My mum beautifully embraced and encouraged the unpredictability of my wayward career.

We'd walk in the canyons, and we'd often walk with Bethe, and Von Neumann, and Bacher. It was a great pleasure.

they worked hard. They work hard today. So they passed along a lot of life lessons by working hard.

I can’t remember that anyone in particular did. I think perhaps it was my mother who influenced me the most. She was a housewife. She had no higher education, but had the most common sense of anyone I knew, and she wanted me to have a career. So she was always very supportive, at a time when many women of her generation would not have been.

You could be brilliant, but if you don’t put in the energy, the output is zero.

I’m so pleased, because Caltech’s name is there as the pioneer of this whole technology…I’m proud of them.

I like simplicity. To me, this is very, very important, whether I am dealing with science or dealing with people.

I have had students and postdocs of the first class close to four hundred people.

Professors are writing more proposals chasing less research money, which reduces the time available for creative thinking.

But look at what we can do at a place like Caltech, with scientists from the Middle East to Europe to Asia to America.