When we think of famous scientists, we think of Albert Einstein, perhaps Marie Curie or Francis Crick. More recently, there’s Peter Higgs, known for the Higgs boson, Andre Geim for graphene or John O’Keefe for his work on the GPS systems in our brains. Though they span vastly different scientific disciplines, they all have one thing in common – they are all Nobel prize winners.

Nobel laureates give a human face to science, a discipline that can often seem anonymous to those who aren’t directly involved. They are great figures in history whose discoveries have transformed our understanding of the universe and in many cases improved our lives in ways that cannot be overestimated.

So when the 2017 Nobel prizes are awarded, we will once again celebrate individuals who have thought differently, taken risks with their work and, in doing so, have made huge leaps forward.

But there is also a danger when the Nobels are such a prominent way of celebrating science. Even lone geniuses – Einstein working in a patent office, for instance – are a product of their scientific environment and times, building on work done by others and benefiting from feedback from their colleagues. If we rely too heavily on the narrative that science is the history of great men and – too seldom – great women, we underestimate how much it is a result of team work and partnerships.

Today, even in the individual labs of most leading scientists, the results are invariably born of a joint effort. Anyone who has been to a conference cannot have missed the slides at the end of nearly every presentation that credit the whole team – from technician, to PhD student, to eminent professor. On an even larger scale, think of the jubilant mission control room of the Mars Curiosity rover; the thousands of collaborators at Cern who validated the existence of the Higgs boson; or the international teams that over 13 years sequenced the first human genome. These stories are powerful too.

And if we look towards some of the great challenges of our time – tackling the problem of clean and sustainable energy, providing sufficient food for a growing planet, developing new genetic technologies to improve health, or harnessing the power of the digital revolution, we start to see how difficult it will be for any one individual to take any of them on alone. The same is true for fundamental science such as understanding the working of the brain or the origin of the universe.

Collaboration brings fresh ideas and new perspectives. Bringing people together from diverse backgrounds, often across borders, leads to new ways of thinking, better solutions and faster progress.

We need to celebrate this collaboration more than ever, because it doesn’t happen on its own. It needs an environment that encourages researchers to build international and interdisciplinary teams, to work in different countries, to attack problems that no one person, or nation, can solve alone.

Bringing people together from diverse backgrounds leads to new ways of thinking, better thinking and faster progress

For 50 years, systems, often invisible, have been carefully constructed to make collaboration possible. Universities have welcomed students from their local communities, from around the country and from around the world, all of whom will lead tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Funding has been put in place, through the European Union and other pan-continental schemes, which fund excellence wherever it’s found. And policies that allow data sharing, multi-hospital clinical trials and open access publishing of results have been implemented to ease the mechanics of science across borders.

But this environment is fragile and uncertain. The growing political success of populist nationalism risks puts these systems and values, so carefully constructed and argued for, at risk.

The cracks are already appearing. Travel bans mean that scientists, often from nations working hard to improve their scientific capability, increasingly cannot collaborate or take part in international meetings and projects.

Uncertainty over eligibility for EU research funding under the €77bn research and innovation programme for 2014-2020, Horizon 2020, after March 2019 means that scientists based in the UK have been excluded from grants, have abandoned potential collaborations or have chosen to work in a country with more certain funding options. A warmer tone, such as we saw last week from Theresa May in her Florence speech on Brexit, or, even better, a clear commitment to remaining in Horizon 2020, would remove this doubt in a stroke.

And for climate scientists, seeing the US withdraw from the Paris climate accord has been a huge blow to progress on a problem that can only be solved with joint action.

It’s up to people who, like me, believe in the power of science to speak up for the systems and principles that make collaboration possible. It means making the case for flexible, welcoming immigration that allows the movement of talented people and teams across borders in order to take global action against global problems.

We can also reach out to leading science nations and emerging superpowers to create better, stronger and more equal scientific partnerships. At Wellcome, we have joined together with some of the greatest scientific institutions in the world, from Max Planck, to the African Academy of Sciences, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to support building these bridges.

Together, science can, with the support of society, solve the world’s most pressing challenges and make discoveries that will further our knowledge and improve our lives in ways we cannot imagine today.

Individuals can achieve a lot, but teams can achieve much more. We are looking forward to celebrating the new Nobel laureates. But let’s also celebrate the collaborators and environment that made their work possible.

Jeremy Farrar is director of Wellcome. For more on international collaboration: www.togethersciencecan.org