Foreword

I wrote this book to remember, while I still can, all the happy moments that my scientific career from 1971 to 2025 brought me, and to pass this information on to anyone who might be interested (colleagues and ex-colleagues, family, etc.). I also did it for my own personal pleasure, because I love to write - it's been a big part of my activity for the last 20 years - and it was a joy for me to put down on paper all these memories, most of them pleasant, even if some episodes were less enjoyable.

         I also imagined that reading these memoirs might be of interest to all those who have taken part in this adventure, Masters, PhD students and post-docs who studied under my supervision, visitors to the laboratory, collaborators, as well as some of my close friends and family, in particular my two sons, who lived near me over the years, sometimes wondering what I spent my weeks doing and why I devoted so much time and energy to this activity.

         I also thought it would be interesting to potentially compare my vision of this journey with theirs: our memories are always partial and imprecise. They are strongly affected by our current interests and motivations. We only remember what interests us, so no two people remember a given event in the same way. Episodes in my career that I experienced as pleasant may therefore have been perceived differently by my students and collaborators. Consulting this biography could help to reconcile these points of view.

         Beyond this very self-focused interest, I think this book has a more didactic value. This account of my career illustrates a number of general themes, including:

-the incredible technical and technological evolution that took place in the second half of the 20th century and continues to this day,

-the resulting transformation of scientific research, which means that the life of a researcher today is very different from what it was when I began my work. I have already commented on these themes in an earlier book[1] , but they are covered here in a more illustrated way,

-the fact that the world has undergone a profound transformation in the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, and in particular that we have gone from a society where everything seemed possible, and where growth and progress seemed to have no limits, to a society that is very aware of the planet's limits, even if it is still reluctant to adapt accordingly,

-and last but not least, the idea that chance and serendipity play a major role in the progress of basic research, and therefore of Science with a capital letter. Fundamental research cannot be planned, otherwise it becomes sterile. Yet over the last few decades, we have seen a shift in research funding towards increasingly applied projects, with a steady reduction in the proportion of funding reserved for basic research. In my view, this is counter-productive. The short-term benefit to society may temporarily increase, but this is at the expense of the more fundamental progress we can hope for in the longer term.

         This being said, there should be no misunderstanding about the role I attribute to serendipity in the progress of my career and of science in general. I am by no means a fatalist, and I believe that hard work is essential to any scientific breakthrough. The results I have accumulated and published have required many hours of dedicated work. But having said that, the questions that were addressed were the result of unplanned meetings or readings. These questions would probably/possibly have been addressed by others or by me at another time, but my path would have been different.

[1] Balthazart J. (2023). Fifty years of evolution in biological research. Progress and regression. ISTE Editions, pp. 153.