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My dad is a chemical engineer, and my mom was a teacher. They were pretty serious about education, but I always thought about things a little bit differently.

My mum is incredibly intelligent.

When I was 11 years old, my mother bought me one of those chemistry sets, and I stayed with it.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

Nobody... took me seriously. They wondered why in the world I wanted to be a chemist when no women were doing that. The world was not waiting for me.

A lot of people don't know that Dad was quite a scientist, and he was so clever.

The first education to be a good chemist is to do well in high school science courses. Then, you go to college to really become a chemist. You want to take science and math. Those are the main things.

I'm about to become a member of the Chemists Society of America. I'm very proud of that.

She was a genius, my mother.