Marco D’Eramo
We observe the contemporary figure of the ‘scientist-entrepreneur’, where the stress falls on ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘scientist’ has a merely descriptive function. It is that while money was previously a side-effect of scientific inquiry, now it is its main purpose (grammatically speaking, scientist used to be the noun, entrepreneur the adjective; now it’s the opposite). And, typically, the moment scientists start profiting, they stop doing science. It is a synthesis of the two paradigms of our time, neoliberalism, in which human beings are defined as entrepreneurs, of themselves if nothing else; and the neo-feudalism of a cognitive aristocracy, whereby alleged superiority of knowledge or competence entitles a select few to rule over the ignorant masses. Of the six scientists awarded the Nobel Prize this year, three for Physics and Chemistry respectively, four had already founded their own companies. Science departments today tirelessly exhort their faculty to become versed in the arcane business of funding procurement, and to pursue areas of inquiry that may be attractive to venture capital.
Now it seems that this ideal is favoured by the jurors of the Swedish Academy. This year’s Prize in Physics awarded the research into an obscure, esoteric quantum property that puzzled even Einstein (who famously called it ‘spooky action at a distance’). Obscure, yes, but with potentially revolutionary applications in the field of quantum computing and therefore highly appealing to investors. It is no surprise, then, that two of the three laureates were entrepreneurs: John Clauser, founder of J. F. Clauser & Associates, and Alain Aspect, co-founder of PASQAL. The technique, called ‘click chemistry’, makes the joining of molecules together simple and efficient. Here again, two were entrepreneurs. Morten Meldal co-founded Betamab Therapeutics in 2019, and perhaps the most emblematic case is Carolyn Bertozzi, who, having served for some time on the scientific committees of pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly, founded a host of startups that, for indicative purposes, are worth listing in full: Thios Pharmaceuticals (2001); Redwood Bioscience (2008), which was subsequently bought by Catalent Pharma Solutions (2014) though Bertozzi remains on its scientific committee; Enable Biosciences (2014); Palleon Pharma (2015); InterVenn Biosciences (2017) and finally OilLux Biosciences and Lycia Therapeutics (2019).
It is no coincidence that Bertozzi is the most entrepreneurial of this year’s prize-winners: her contribution was precisely to have found a way to apply ‘click chemistry’ to biological molecules. Over the last forty years, biology is the scientific field that has most fully embraced entrepreneurship precisely because it is directly connected with genetic engineering (note the industrial- technological term ‘engineering’). Eric Betzig won the prize for Chemistry in 2014 for his pioneering work on super-resolved microscopy and recently co-founded Eikon Therapeutics (2021), which seeks to apply the results of his research.
Not all researchers wait for the Nobel before launching their own startup. If one estimates the future profitability of a discovery, it is simply financial foresight to launch one’s company while you wait for the Nobel stamp of approval. A leader in a given field throwing themselves into commercial ventures and stock exchange listings then has knock-on effects, encouraging their disciples, assistants and students to do likewise. A cycle develops that favours academics who know how to attract funding and who therefore, even before becoming full-blown entrepreneurs, are already effective company managers, fostering those protégés and projects that tend towards commercialization.
Already in 2006, a study by the Max Planck Society found that that one in four scientists who patent their results also establish their own business.
Now is not the time for a wider discussion of intellectual property. Nor of the concept of nature, which has been deformed by these legal rulings and the technical-industrial practice they have spawned. Instead, let us focus on the relationship between science and profit that we’ve so far been delineating. The wildest example is that of the world-famous mathematician Jim Simons: his research into Riemannian topological varieties has found application in quantum physics, earning him numerous awards. In 1982, Simons used his mathematical research to develop an investment algorithm that exploited the inefficiencies of financial markets, and founded a hedge fund called Renaissance Technologies (its flagship fund is called Medallion, in sardonic reference to Simons’ various prizes). Simons has been referred to as ‘the world’s greatest investor’ and ‘the most successful fund manager of all time’. His personal fortune is estimated at around $25 billion. When he retired in 2010, his place was taken by Robert Mercer, an inveterate partisan of the far right, founder of Cambridge Analytica (renowned for its role in the Brexit campaign and Trump’s election) and a major funder of Breitbart News. Marx coined the term ‘scientific socialism’, Simons can boast of having implemented scientific capitalism.
Abridged by Bankim Datta.
