It looked like an agricultural frame, something you might grow peas up – a lot of wires and cables strung from posts over a space the size of 57 tennis courts. It was actually built to study radio emission from quasars. I built the prototype and then six of us took two years to build the real thing.

To get the most out of the world around you you’ve got to really look hard. Most people out walking in the woods don’t really look. They just glance around. They scan. Before I start a painting I spend a lot of time looking and thinking, I go out in the car and pull a chair out of the boot and sit in the woods. I sit there and smoke and just look.

Having found suitable men, our next problem was to keep them and nurture them until they were ready. To do that I had to give them work of significance to do, and not treat them as apprentices. As I allotted them important tasks, some of the old guard became apprehensive for their own positions. They saw no reason why these bright, young, energetic men who had not contributed to the struggle, should come in and displace them before they were ready to go.

In every way at every turn, the question we ask ourselves is not what can we do, but what should we do?.”

However, I should say that the education system in Iran is not the way people might imagine here. As a graduate student at Harvard, I had to explain quite a few times that I was allowed to attend a university as a woman in Iran. While it is true that boys and girls go to separate schools up to high school, this does not prevent them from participating say in the Olympiads or the summer camps.