Though much of the debate before the referendum focused on Britain’s financial payments to the European Union, the science sector has unquestionably benefited from membership, receiving net contributions of 3.4 billion euros, or about $3.7 billion, from a variety of European Union programs from 2007 to 2013.

European Union money accounted for 40 percent of funding for cancer research in Britain over the last decade, according to Digital Science, a consulting firm based in London. In nanotechnology research, that figure is 62 percent, and in evolutionary biology, it is 67 percent.

Those resources have plugged the gap in falling British government funding, adjusted for inflation, and low levels of investment from Britain’s private sector, figures from Digital Science show. British businesses contribute the equivalent of 1.06 percent of their country’s gross domestic product toward research and development, 80 percent less than what German companies contribute toward research and development in Germany.

The country has also attracted talent from across Europe. That is largely because of the relative ease of doing business in Britain, coupled with ecosystems developed around top universities, and that the bloc’s free movement of labor means no citizen of a European Union member country requires a visa to work in Britain.

Around 30,000 scientists and researchers from member states are employed by British universities — equivalent to 20 percent of their teaching and research staff — and a full 60 percent of research papers in Britain are written with partners in the European Union.

All of those factors are crucial to Mr. Durant and his fledgling business.

After getting his degree, he went on to obtain a Ph.D. In 2007, he received a Marie Curie Fellowship, which finances research across the bloc. Then, after the eruption in 2010 of an Icelandic volcano that disrupted global air travel, he started Satavia.