You ask what science can do for those who voted for US President Donald Trump, suggesting that it would be useful to work with local communities on research problems that could improve their quality of life (Nature 542, 391; 2017). I disagree.

Most people forget that curiosity-driven research by James Clerk Maxwell, Heinrich Hertz, Hans Christian Ørsted, André-Marie Ampère and Michael Faraday gave us electricity and radio. Without Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, our hospitals would not work. Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and others founded the knowledge for techniques on which today's world is reliant — not least, microprocessors, the Global Positioning System and mobile phones. Results from DNA technology are still just the tip of the iceberg. And, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web has transformed communication.

Universities are global institutions that have the primary objectives of creating knowledge and educating people to continue the development of our societies. Building stronger links with local society and solving local problems should never be a priority for any university.