Harold E. Varmus is invited by the Collège de France assembly at the suggestion of Pr Edith Heard.
I became a scientist over fifty years ago, while performing an alternative to military service at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during the US War in Vietnam, after studying literature and medicine. Ever since, I have done experimental work, in academia and government, initially to understand how retroviruses grow and cause cancer, later to learn how mutated cellular genes drive human cancers and serve as targets for new therapies. For almost half of that time, I have also been involved in the governance of science, having led three major institutions that fund and conduct scientific work: the NIH, the National Cancer Institute, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
These experiences have been rich sources of material-for a memoir (The Art and Politics of Science [Norton, 2009], free at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK190622/); for a course on the scientific enterprise that I have been teaching to undergraduate students in New York City for the past seven years(https://courseworks2.columbia.edu/courses/180297); and now for the four lectures that I will deliver in March at the College de France.
In those lectures, using examples from my own experience, I will discuss several fundamental aspects of the scientific enterprise: Who does scientific work and for what reasons? Who pays for it and why? How is new knowledge generated, shared, and used, locally and globally? How are scientists evaluated and rewarded? How can the enterprise be improved?
All lectures are in English.
