The World Science Festival this past week was another triumph of cultural cross-pollination, but I’m afraid there was one missed opportunity to bring art and science together. If only someone had thought to put Daniel Boulud and Nathan Myhrvold on the same stage, we could have considered the ultimate interdisciplinary question: Can science create a better burger?

While scientists were convening at festival events all over New York City, Mr. Boulud, the famed French chef, and fellow foodies were participating in a separate symposium on Friday with a wonderfully grandiose title, “The State of the Hamburger.” The symposium, sponsored by Esquire magazine, was held to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the introduction of Mr. Boulud’s hamburger, which the food experts dated as the beginning of the international burger renaissance.

That delicacy, oddly enough, was the indirect result of the anti-burger movement a decade ago in France, where protesters became national heroes by ransacking a McDonald’s. During that controversy, when I asked French chefs in New York what they thought of hamburgers, Mr. Boulud called them the world’s most successful snack and said the French were just jealous.

“The French wish they could have invented McDonald’s,” he said, and added, as an afterthought, that he’d always wanted to invent an “adult burger” himself. Then he invited me and my wife to his kitchen to watch him create one combining Wyoming beef, black truffles and Colorado short ribs braised in red wine.