"The role that may be played, --once the current pandemic is more controlled— by “fundamental” research"

The weird title of this talk is meant to hide its more ponderous intention: to discuss with you the role that may be played, --once the current pandemic is more controlled— by “fundamental” research, the one that is primarily done for the sake of pure and basic knowledge, not for short-term economic spin-offs.

The Higgs boson is the latest of the elementary particles to have been discovered. Its average lifetime is so short that it is impossible to imagine something more useless in practice! And yet, its relation to Covid-19 is quite considerable. “The Higgs” was discovered at CERN, a laboratory on the Swiss-French border. One of many spin-offs of the fundamental research at CERN is the http, the universal computer-language that allows the WWW to function as it does. After the pandemic, research funds will be redirected. Hopefully, basic biology, genetics, and medicine will receive a fair fraction of the funds that they deserve. But what will be the fate of the budget of the rest of the basic, not-for-profit sciences? That is the question we would like you to consider, in broader terms than the ones included in this brief abstract.