'I've never been interested in microscopy'

Some people came to me after the [Nobel] prize and said ‘When I was a kid I had a microscope and I loved it!’ thinking that I had a little microscope, too. Or they gave me a little microscope as a present because they thought I liked them. Some people collect old microscopes, and they bring me to their collection and walk me through it. Ugh, boring! If I had really been interested or in love with these conventional types of microscopes, I’d never have done what I did. I just wanted to solve a physical problem: the diffraction resolution limit in microscopy. Full stop.