One of the over-riding things for many who grow up in poverty is the simple desire to escape. I think it was sort of obvious to me that escape had to be through education.
I did the Kilimanjaro climb a few years ago, then the six-day trek to Machu Picchu in Peru so this bike ride to raise money for Great Ormond Street seemed like the next big challenge.
Instead of an attic with a few test tubes, bits of wire and odds and ends, the attack on the atomic nucleus has required the development and construction of great instruments on an engineering scale.
The Carrion Crow and Turkey-Buzzard possess great power of recollection, so as to recognise at a great distance a person who has shot at them, and even the horse on which he rides.
By recognizing that the chemical atom is composed of single separable electric quanta, humanity has taken a great step forward in the investigation of the natural world.
Many scientists will have to contribute to the solution of the great problem; they will have to follow up and measure all those phenomena in which the atomic structure is directly expressed.
All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.
From the beginning of the Radiation Laboratory, I have had the rare good fortune of being in the center of a group of men of high ability, enthusiastic and completely devoted to scientific pursuits.
In the Astronaut Office we're never totally out of training, we always keep our hand in it. But after five years, things have changed and so it's been good to get back into the flow and relearn a lot of things.
I have always had good strength in my legs from working out with weights. I have also been riding a bike of some sort for most of my life and have good agility.
I started out doing triathlons because they terrified me! I'm a good swimmer, I learned to ride a bike in college, and I hate running. It seemed like something I could never do, so I decided, 'I'm gonna do it.'
I grew up hiking and horseback riding in Tennessee, so I love being outside. I will joyfully run 12 miles, but I'm not very good at boot camps. When they start yelling, I start laughing.
It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics...
It's like, God, I'm in my 80s. Nobody, when I die, is going to say, 'How young?' They're going to say she had a great ride.
A lot's riding on 'Dune,' and my friends in Seattle realize what's happening if I freak out a bit. They accept whatever I happen to be, and they tell me when I'm slipping out of Kyle. They call me the 'God Emperor of the Universe.'
As a physicist, I can state that none of the 18 physicists who signed the Statement works in this field; nor to my knowledge has ever published a paper on this subject.
Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.
If, on occasion, the knowledge brought by science leads to an unhappy end, this is not to the discredit of science but is rather an indication of an imperfect ability to use wisely the gifts placed within our hands.
There is a new model of leadership in the world that rides on the premise that every single person in the organisation can be a leader. Titles are important for structure and order, but real power does not come from titles.
When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.
Just able barely to mount a horse and ride about a little in the spring of 1866, my life was threatened daily, and I was forced to go heavily armed. The whole country was then full of militia, robbing, plundering and killing.
