The wind always blows over the water, and when a place so boldly juts out into Lake Constance like Lindau, then it's always a question of preparing yourself, even for turbulent times.

Of course, you don't see that on the picturesque old town island.

Just as little as the thousands upon thousands of tourists who stride across the historic cobblestones every year suspect a magnetic center of global science here.

A conference center for highly decorated top researchers and selected young scientists from all continents who are looking for three constants from Lindau for a week: encounters, interaction, inspiration.

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the feuilleton, responsible for the "Nature and Science" department.

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From the end of June onwards, this year's meeting was no different in this regard than it has been in the past more than seventy years.

And yet this wind could be felt there, a sharp wind of change even rising, which is clearly also having a noticeable impact on events that are steeped in tradition, such as this meeting of top researchers on Lake Constance.

In her opening speech in front of more than 30 Nobel Prize winners and a good five hundred young researchers from ninety countries, the German Federal Research and Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger called this the “disruptions” of our time, all of them crises that also demand a lot from science.

"We are called upon to act," said the minister, referring to the climate crisis.

Corona, for example, the other most current global crisis, had ensured a two-year moratorium on the Lindau meeting.

The return from the virtual to the physical encounter in the new Inselhalle was a step back to the normality of the Lindau Conferences, which were dedicated to chemistry this year.

And yet it was a return with new signs.

The ability to withstand crises and the willingness to reform of the sciences themselves are now higher on the agenda than ever.

“There must be no political borders in science”

In one of the breakfast meetings between the laureates and the youngsters, for example, there was talk of an emerging “cultural change” – actually a euphemism, because to speak of a change when many changes and adjustments are required at the same time can at best be vaguely related to the magnitude of the tasks to express.

For biochemist Randy Shekman, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, who spoke to Martin Vetterli, President of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), at this morning session, this change is both inward-looking and outward-looking.

The message that can be found in many research institutions, for example, is directed outwards and into the future, not to break “bridges” with the unlawful state of Russia – on the contrary:

"There can be no political borders in science," Shekman said vehemently, including China.

Shekman left it open how close this strategic cooperation should be in the future, and for which institutional levels this closeness should and can apply.