I have always been interested - indeed, waylaid - by the leading edges of technology, even during my Ph.D. years when I pioneered (but did not publish) agarose gel electrophoresis for RNA fractionation. Also, much later, I was instrumental in showing that Green Fluorescent Protein and RNAi could be made to work in mammalian cells.

About 15,000 years ago, humans colonised America, wiping out in the process about 75% of its large mammals. Numerous other species disappeared from Africa, from Eurasia, and from the myriad islands around their coasts. The archaeological record of country after country tells the same sad story.

I've become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting, which is a style of parenting that... basically, the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so.

I didn't really realize I was a woman director until I walked onto the set at Pinewood Studios when I did 'Mamma Mia!' and everybody was calling each other 'Governor' and 'Sir'... and then, looking at me, 'Well... good morning!'

If it wasn't for women, I wouldn't be here. I'm a mamma's boy at heart. I love my mom. I have the deepest, utmost respect for women.

My dear mamma is quite right when she says that we must lay down principles and not depart from them. The king will not have the same weaknesses as his grandfather. I hope that he will have no favorites; but I am afraid that he is too mild and too easy. You may depend upon it that I will not draw the king into any great expenses.

There's parts of it that I connect to - being a father and everything - but 'Mamma Mia!' allows me to go out there and be me and have fun. I've never really had the chance to do that with so much freedom.

I used to go to musicals every birthday - that was my birthday present. We'd go to London, me and my two brothers and mum and dad. I think I saw 'Mamma Mia' about five times.

Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature. Many of them don't have much to do with evolution - they're observations about the details of physiology, biochemistry, development, and so on - but many of them do. And every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect, supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don't have a single one. We don't find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that only benefit a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific truth.

Life is a useless passion, an exciting journey of a mammal in survival mode. Each day is a miracle, a blessing unexplored and the more you immerse yourself in light, the less you will feel the darkness. There is more to life than nothingness. And cynicism. And nihilism. And selfishness. And glorious isolation. Be selfish with yourself, but live your life through your immortal acts, acts that engrain your legacy onto humanity. Transcend your fears and follow yourself into the void instead of letting yourself get eaten up by entropy and decay. Freedom is being yourself without permission. Be soft and leave a lasting impression on everybody you meet

That work led to the emergence of the recombinant DNA technology thereby providing a major tool for analyzing mammalian gene structure and function and formed the basis for me receiving the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Thousands of years ago humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times despite the efforts of modern science.

I've become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting which is a style of parenting that... basically the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so.