The couple trying to keep killer ‘zombie viruses’ at bay – and protect us from another pandemic

Jean-Michel Claverie was already at retirement age when he travelled to Siberia to hunt for ancient viruses in the Arctic. After a long career as a research scientist – and 25 years since he had set up a laboratory outside Marseille with his wife Chantal Abergel – he could have put his feet up. He and Abergel, who is 62, commute to their lab from a comfortable house near the pretty harbour town of Cassis. But Claverie, who was about to turn 70, had no intention of hanging up his lab coat.