Everyone thinks I must have been an ace in school. But I didn’t work hard, I was lazy. I liked to be lazy. I thought laziness stimulated your imagination.

I was always trying to look modest and natural. I don’t like women who come into the lab and you see immediately that it took them two hours to dress in the morning.

I think women who are pretty certainly have an advantage in any field, in any profession. When a girl is born people still say: Oh, I’m glad that she is pretty. They don’t look at whether she is intelligent.

I know labs where women refuse to make a coffee for others because they don’t want to be seen doing seemingly female things. I think this is stupid. Why not make a coffee, bring a cake? I do it.

I think there are profound differences between women and men. In intelligence and creativity, there is no difference, but in what one loves, what one likes, the passions – there are differences.

The pressure on kids is high to get good grades. In my time, no one cared about it. My father looked at them but he didn’t really make much fuss about them.

In my age group I don’t know a single woman who is as successful as I am. I am the total exception. You can be very proud of it. But you are also very isolated.

I am often asked why there is discrimination against women in science. And I have given it some thought. With prejudicial attitudes, you can't really do much. You can point out when people discriminate and ask them not to.

Successful women are not liked. I think the biggest danger for women in science is colleagues who are not as good as you are.

In mathematics and science, there is no difference in the intelligence of men and women. The difference in genes between men and women is simply the Y chromosome, which has nothing to do with intelligence.