Luc Montagnier Quotes

In my lab, we are constantly asking, 'What's the utility of this pure science that we're doing? Let's nudge it a little bit in a direction where people can connect to it and have some fun and/or help some very serious problems they have.'

Whilst worthy in themselves, applications shouldn't be the only way to drive basic research.

Whatever basic science resolves, at some stage it is of use to society. The problem is we do not know when or where.

Science or research is always under pressure to deliver something which can be used immediately for society.

Technological innovations [in public health] that come from basic science have to be transformed from discovery to delivery, and that gap is huge.

I was always a data guy, not a theorist. Theorists can maintain total purity. The data are always messy.

Her death contributed to my later interest in studying biochemistry, an interest that has not been fulfilled in the sense that my accomplishments remain more at the basic than the applied level.

My successes already accomplished have mostly been taking existing science and getting people to apply it in their everyday lives.

No matter how counter-intuitive it may seem, basic research has proven over and over to be the lifeline of practical advances in medicine.

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

Projects can take years to exhibit proof-of-concept and a few more years to be converted into commercial realities.

The links have to be between universities, R&D institutes, and industry. If these linkages are in place, it will result in products that are useful for society. The government has to leverage the money it spends on R&D to help develop new products useful for industry.

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

I don't spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

My passion for innovation and my interest in the 'business of science' has seen Biocon commercialize many innovative platforms and products.

My focus is not on solving nature's deeper mysteries. It is on using nature's deeper mysteries to solve important societal problems.

If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it.

Cross pollination of fields, innovation in one stimulates revolutionary changes in another. All the instruments in a hospital which allow us observation of the human body without cutting you open were based on principles of physicists developed by physicists who had no interest in medicine. This is the way innovation moves from one field to another.

Politicians of all stripes are always in danger at looking at every problem from an abstract point of view or being briefed by officials, academics, or economists who know every science but the science of human nature.

There has no doubt to be fundamental research in science, but applied research is equally important for new improvements and changes in our techniques.

When I did inventions, I always thought only of the invention itself, but the kids would ask for marketing materials.

I don't like to move abstract theoretical policies that, on a white paper, sound good. If I wanted to do that, I'd be a professor.

There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application.

The life of doctrine is in application.

To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope.