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American science is much more organized, much more hierarchical than British science has been.

I think British science is becoming more like American science - and then there is everybody else, I'm afraid.

We are more dependent on science and engineering than at any other time in history. However, there is plenty of evidence that far too many people are scientifically illiterate, often having been put off science at school.

Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there.

Education in British schools isn't good enough. It's not remotely imaginative enough. It lets down too many children, excluding them from society, and, as I've often said, people who are excluded from society tend to express themselves in ways not acceptable to society.

We didn't set out to be educators or even scientists, and we don't purport that what we do is real science but we're demonstrating a methodology by which one can engage and satisfy your curiosity.

After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.

Science is definitely part of America's infrastructure, the engine of prosperity. And yet science is given almost no visibility in the media.

Look, science is hard, it has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, and that's the result of 400 years of science, right? I mean, in the 18th century, in the 18th century you could become an expert on any field of science in an afternoon by going to a library, if you could find the library, right?

The center line of science literacy - which not many people tell you, but I feel this strongly, and I will go to my grave making this point - is how you think.