The Scientist Who Saved the World

Karikó spends her time with tremendous care now. Too much of it is taken up with emailing; Susan keeps telling her mother that she doesn’t need to respond to all of the people who write to express their individual vaccine hesitancies. But Karikó feels responsible. “The distance between what the average person is knowing about the vaccine and what t... See more

That morning at the lab, Karikó’s old boss had come to see her off. She did not tell him what a terrible mistake he was making in letting her leave. She didn’t gloat about her future at BioNTech, a pharmaceuticals firm that millions now associate with lifesaving vaccines but was then a relative upstart in the field. Instead the woman who had bounce... See more