Quotes from Christiane Nusslein-Volhard

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.

In German science, we have a special problem. We lose talented women at the time they get pregnant. Some of it occurs because they are encouraged - by their husbands, bosses and the government - to take long maternity leaves.

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

It is very important for me to be taken seriously for my science and not for my looks or other personal accomplishments.

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.

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.

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.

I remember that already as a child I was often intensely interested in things, obsessed by ideas and projects in many areas, and in these topics I learned much on my own, reading books.

I immediately loved working with flies. They fascinated me and followed me around in my dreams.

I had a happy childhood, with many stimulations and support from my parents who, in postwar times, when it was difficult to buy things, made children's books and toys for us. We had much freedom and were encouraged by our parents to do interesting things.

Humans are something very different from animals, and the numbers required to get cloning to work in animals are completely prohibitory with humans.

At the time I finished high school, I was determined to study biology, deeply convinced to eventually be a researcher.

People think if you have deciphered the genome of humans that you can change everything. But you cannot change everything, because you do not know what the genes mean, and you have no methods for changing them, and you can't do experiments with humans like you can with animals.

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 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.

I was raised with this idea of hard work and keeping doors open. To be able to choose what you want to do in the future. That was what we tried to tell our children, too.

If woman wants to have kids and work a little less she has a big disadvantage compared to a male colleague who has a stay-at-home wife packing his suitcases.