I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it's too late by college.

I was really bright as a kid and tested well and it was clear that I was going to get scholarships to any schools I wanted. My dad always said I could be an engineer at that time it was the elite of society: steady job working in science which was then the answer to every problem we had. It was kind of a mandate. Kind of a dream he had for me.

My dad grew up in a working-class Jewish neighbourhood and I got a scholarship from my dad's union to go to college. I went there to get an education not as an extension of privilege.

The humblest painter is a true scholar and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.

I was going to be an architect. I graduated with a degree in architecture and I had a scholarship to go back to Princeton and get my Masters in architecture. I'd done theatricals in college but I'd done them because it was fun.

Scholarship was one thing drudgery another. I very soon concluded that nothing would induce me to read let alone make notes on hundreds and hundreds of very very very boring books.

It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars who in the known alone would shrivel up with boredom.