Katalin Karikó

Katalin Karikó shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on messenger RNA that made the COVID-19 vaccines possible, after decades in which she was demoted, defunded and repeatedly told the idea would not work. Born in Szolnok, Hungary in 1955, she grew up in Kisújszállás in a house without running water; her father was a butcher. She took a doctorate at the University of Szeged and worked at its Biological Research Centre until the laboratory lost its funding in 1985. She emigrated to the United States with her husband and two-year-old daughter, carrying about nine hundred pounds sewn into the child's teddy bear because Hungary restricted currency exports. She joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and pursued mRNA as a therapy: instructing cells to make a protein rather than introducing the protein itself. Grant applications were rejected consistently. The obstacle was that synthetic mRNA triggered a violent inflammatory response, and the field concluded it was unusable. In 1995, facing a choice between leaving and accepting demotion from the tenure track, she stayed at lower rank and pay while being treated for cancer. She met Drew Weissman at a photocopier in 1997. Together they found the answer, published in 2005: replacing the nucleoside uridine with pseudouridine let the modified mRNA evade the immune sensors while still producing protein. The paper attracted little attention at the time. BioNTech and Moderna licensed the chemistry. She joined BioNTech as a vice-president in 2013, and the technology produced authorised vaccines within a year of the pandemic's start. Her daughter Susan Francia won two Olympic gold medals in rowing.

• Lived: 1955 CE – ?
• Nationality: Hungarian
• Roles: biochemist, scientist