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I think a scientist's job is to explore the Universe, to explore the cosmos around us. People always want to know - why is that useful? Well, on just pure fundamental grounds, on some level it's like art, it's like umm, music, it's aesthetics, it's like philosophy. You want to know where you are in the Universe.

I think becoming a scientist is the product of parents who gave me enormous opportunities to master nature.

Being a scientist is a special privilege: for it brings the opportunity to be creative, the passionate quest for answers to nature's most precious secrets, and the warm friendships of many valued colleagues.

As an undergraduate, I did maths and physics. That doesn't make me a scientist. So I try to read and understand and talk to scientists.

Science is a perception of the world around us. Science is a place where what you find in nature pleases you.

I think that's something a scientist can do because a scientist works at a border, at the edge of science, at the edge of knowledge, and so there's a lot of fun of reaching out and thinking about things that other people didn't think about. And so it has a kind of exploratory notion, kind of adventurous part in it.

My childhood and adolescence were filled with visiting scientists from both India and abroad, many of whom would stay with us. A life of science struck me as being both interesting and particularly international in its character.

Science is what scientists do.

Science is an enterprise that should be cherished as an activity of the free human mind. Because it transforms who we are, how we live, and it gives us an understanding of our place in the universe.

I was a terrible science student, so I could never be a scientist; my mind doesn't work that way. But I've learned to love the stories around science, and I have so much respect and fascination for the people who can make discoveries and find applications. There's a lot of drama there.