Edith Heard holds a number of prestigious positions and honors. Professor at the Collège de France, gold medal from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in 2024, for the past seven years she has headed the 1,800-strong European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. At the age of 60, she is about to take over the reins of the Francis Crick Institute in London, the city where she grew up, torn between two worlds and two cultures.

I wouldn't have got here if...

... If, in my first year of university, alongside my main subjects of math, physics and chemistry, I hadn't chosen biology. I'd never taken it in high school, I was totally ignorant. I wasn't missing out because I wanted to become a physicist. But whereas everywhere else in England, you had to take one subject, at Cambridge you had to take four. I could have chosen history and philosophy of science. I liked history, but I knew nothing about philosophy. And that option was a bit scorned. So I opted for biology.

Was it love at first sight?

I remember the first class. We were given a book, Biology of the Cell, I opened it in different places and discovered things I'd never seen: the inside of the cell, the organization of the cytoplasm, the nucleus. I was amazed, truly amazed. A real "eureka" moment. I fell into an incredible cultural breeding ground. It was almost infectious. We were in the midst of the molecular biology revolution, the beginning of genome sequencing, the first work on stem cells... I had some tremendously inspiring professors. An intense energy emanated from all these people. The following year, I decided to make biology my main subject. My life changed direction.

Was it an easy switch?

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