Catherine Bréchignac is a physicist by training, specialising in nanoscience equations on the order and disorder of matter. She has been President of the French National Research Centre and is Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. She has worked to counter psychological and sociological biases that favour obscurantism and ideological radicalism, as well as negative interpretations of scientific progress. She is the President of the French Republic’s Special Ambassador for Science. She has written books on science and society, and the two most recently published are: La Sardine et le diamant - De l'utilité de l'ordre et du désordre (Cherche Midi, 2020) and Retour vers l’obscurantisme (Cherche Midi, 2022).