The walk to lunch in Paris with the head of one of France’s most prestigious research establishments takes me under a jagged arch topped by feathered dinosaurs. The scene is part of a Jurassic light show at the Jardin des Plantes, a cradle of discovery where I am meeting Yasmine Belkaid, president of the Pasteur Institute. Beyond looms the Beaux-Arts style National Museum of Natural History where Henri Becquerel stumbled upon natural radioactivity in 1896, after noticing how uranium salts fogged a photographic plate.
This sinuous scientific story and the accompanying January cold are powerful appetisers for my meeting with Belkaid at Les Belles Plantes café-brasserie. She tells me she chose the place because it symbolises the “position of science” and the “complex ecosystem” in which it is intertwined.
It is a sign that this meal will be heavy with portentous imagery and context. Hours after our lunch has taken place, Donald Trump begins his second presidential term with far-reaching changes to institutions at the heart of Belkaid’s world. The US National Institutes of Health, where she used to work, is in a legal battle over planned cuts of billions of dollars to research grants. Material related to gender and racial diversity has disappeared from the websites of the NIH and other scientific institutions.