This question brings me to despair. Is it really true that the world wants to hear only one thing about science? And then continue after that, with its ongoing religious, superstitious and political disputes? There are thousands of essential things you need to know about science.

Maybe the world wants to hear only one thing from me. What could that be? All the important things that the world has already heard from my colleagues might be incomplete - my colleagues may have forgotten to tell the world something. What could that be? I do not know.

Sometimes, I feel that not enough emphasis is being placed upon education - education of our children, and education of people in desolate places and developing countries. I wish to spread the message that ministers of science and technology, all over the world, cannot do enough to enhance the availability of knowledge, and to enforce the education of people, particularly young people. People's prosperity in the near future depends upon this.

Do people really want to understand only one concept or discovery? And remain forever disinterested in anything else? It is that attitude that worries me. What is important is to try to understand as much as possible about the world in which we live - you cannot isolate just one concept. spiked's question sounds exactly like the question often asked by students - 'what parts of the text in this book should I learn, to pass my test, and which parts may I skip?' I refuse to answer that.

Gerardus 't Hooft is editor of 50 Years of Yang-Mills Theory (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)). See his website.