I'm A Mathematician, Basically. What I Do

When World War Ii Came Along, Which Was When I Was A Teenager, We All Expected We Would Have Anthrax Bombs And This Kind Of Stuff. We Thought It Would Be A Biological War. Fortunately It Wasn't And, But It's Because The Danger Is Still There And By Some Miracle We Escaped All That, So You Never Can Tell What It Going To Happen, But Biology Certainly Could Be Even Worse Than Physics And Chemistry.

One Of The Memorable Moments Of My Life Was When Willard Libby Came To Princeton With A Little Jar Full Of Crystals Of Barium Xenate. A Stable Compound, Looking Like Common Salt, But Much Heavier. This Was The Magic Of Chemistry, To See Xenon Trapped Into A Crystal.

The Point Of Fact Is, Just In Simple Ways, You Can See How Much Better Things Have Gotten. I Mean, When I Was A Child, I Lived In England, And England Was Just Amazingly Polluted. We Didn't Use That Word. We Just Said It Was It All Covered With Soot.

The Great Question For Our Time Is, How To Make Sure That The Continuing Scientific Revolution Brings Benefits To Everybody Rather Than Widening The Gap Between Rich And Poor. To Lift Up Poor Countries, And Poor People In Rich Countries, From Poverty, To Give Them A Chance Of A Decent Life, Technology Is Not Enough. Technology Must Be Guided And Driven By Ethics If It Is To Do More Than Provide New Toys For The Rich.

It's Us That's Really Amazing. As Far As I Can See, Our Concentration Of Different Abilities In One Species - There's Nothing I Can See That In This Darwinian Evolution That Could've Done That. So It Seems To Be A Miracle Of Some Sort.