nobel prize winner kati kariko--9/9/26

09 Sep 2026

nobel prize winner kati kariko--9/9/26

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Today's encore selection -- from Breaking Through by Katalin Karikó. The early struggles of Katalin Karikó, who, along with Drew Weissman, developed the extraordinary mRNA technology that was used globally in a vaccine to combat the COVID virus and is now being used to develop a broad array of vaccines for other diseases:

“I didn’t feel smart. Not here [in the United States]. Back in Kisujszallas, [Hungary], I'd begun my education as a relatively ordinary student. I'd succeeded by outworking everyone else, eventually feeling as capable as anyone. Now, at university, it was the same story. The other students in my program seemed to learn things so much more easily than I did. Again, I had to work for everything I got.

“We took classes in evolutionary biology, organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Some of us—those of us who hadn't been exposed to English, which is to say most of us from small towns—took English classes, too. I'd had zero exposure to English, and I'll be honest: I suffered through those courses. After the third year of university courses, I spent a whole summer learning English; I passed my exams, but the language would never feel natural to me. For the rest of my life, even after decades in America, I would speak with a thick Hungarian accent. I'd use the past tense incorrectly (‘he didn't jumped’ instead of ‘he didn't jump’). Sometimes when I talked, I would see native English speakers—even colleagues who had known me for a long time—squint at me, their telltale looks of confusion signs that they did not understand what I was saying.

“I struggled with other things. I had no experience in a chemistry lab, for example. Other students, who had taken chemistry lab in high school, moved efficiently around the room, setting up test tubes and glassware (beakers, pipettes, and burettes) as if it were second nature. They pulled solutions into droppers effortlessly, knew without asking how to calibrate a scale. I was clumsy. I had no muscle memory for this work, no intuition at first. And the work we were doing was sometimes hard.

Katalin Karikó wall painting in Budapest, Hungary

In analytical chemistry lab, for example, the professor would hand us mystery solutions—an ampulla of clear liquid, say, with no other information. It was up to us to figure out what the solution was made of, using a series of individual tests. We'd each work through the challenge logically, one step at a time. We'd drop the substance onto a flame; if colors flared orange, that meant it had sodium. (To this day, when I cook at a gas burner, I cannot resist dropping a bit of salt onto the flame to watch the color change.) If it turned blue, on the other hand, it meant the solution contained copper. These challenges were easy at first, but they grew increasingly complex. We might work for three hours before we could deduce the chemical composition of the solution in our hands. Sometimes I failed to figure it out entirely. In those moments, especially at first, I felt out of place. I'd try to remind myself then: Was this not precisely what Hans Selye had described, asking yes-or-no questions of the universe? (Is the solution acidic? Litmus paper turns red, so yes. Did it turn blue? Then no.) Was this not, in fact, the work of Columbo?

“Just one more thing. That's how I got better: just one more question, one more test, one more thing I might think of, one more task to which I could apply myself. I could read, reread, then start over. I could memorize, test myself on what I had just learned, then study some more, just to be sure. Again and again and again: just one more thing.

“If I have any superpower, it has always been this: a willingness to work hard and methodically, and refuse to stop.

“We had a lot of homework, and I did every bit of it. It felt so difficult to retain all this information, as if filling my brain with new information might squeeze out things I had previously learned. I was often up until two in the morning. I'd sleep for just three or four hours before waking to do a bit more homework before classes. If I grew tired, I opened a window. The truth is, I was always tired, so the window was always open, even when it was snowing. (I still do this now, even in winter, to keep myself awake.)

“Each morning, I'd cross the bridge toward my classes, traffic whizzing past me as I walked. Although I had a bicycle at first, it was soon stolen. I didn't get another. In the cafeteria, I ate whatever was served. The dorm had a kitchen where other students cooked meals, but I never did. I wasn't fussy. The food was fine. And, anyway, who had time to cook?”