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#EqualRightsForWomen #KatalinKarikó #NobelPrize #MRNA #EdTech #STEAM #Women #WomensHistoryMonth
How mRNA went from a scientific backwater to a pandemic crusher
For decades, Katalin Karikó’s work into mRNA therapeutics was overlooked by her colleagues.
Now it’s at the heart of the two leading coronavirus vaccines
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech
Psst… get your COVID booster everyone, it’s based on Nobel Prize-winning technology!
Everything you need to know about the current state of academic careers: Today’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine is an adjunct, unable to get a tenure track job or grants because she has been deemed “unsuitable” for such a position and her research has been assessed as insufficiently interesting to fund. [unmuffled screaming and vulgarities]
The University of Pennsylvania is acting proud of Katalin Karikó now that she’s won a Nobel Prize. But they kicked her out of her tenure track job when she insisted on doing the work that won her that prize:
“She recalls spending one Christmas and New Year’s Eve conducting experiments and writing grant applications. But many other scientists were turning away from the field, and her bosses at UPenn felt mRNA had shown itself to be impractical and she was wasting her time. They issued an ultimatum: if she wanted to continue working with mRNA she would lose her prestigious faculty position, and face a substantial pay cut.
”It was particularly horrible as that same week, I had just been diagnosed with cancer,” said Karikó. “I was facing two operations, and my husband, who had gone back to Hungary to pick up his green card, had got stranded there because of some visa issue, meaning he couldn’t come back for six months. I was really struggling, and then they told me this.”
“While undergoing surgery, Karikó assessed her options. She decided to stay, accept the humiliation of being demoted, and continue to doggedly pursue the problem. This led to a chance meeting which would both change the course of her career, and that of science.”
Elsewhere she recalled:
“I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else. I also thought maybe I’m not good enough, not smart enough.”
She’s now an adjunct in UPenn’s neurosurgery department. Will they make her tenure-track now that she has a Nobel? Luckily she also has a good job at BioNTech.
Both quotes here come from interesting stories. The first is from here:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech
The second is from here:
https://billypenn.com/2020/12/29/university-pennsylvania-covid-vaccine-mrna-kariko-demoted-biontech-pfizer/
The story of mRNA: How a once-dismissed idea became a leading technology in the Covid vaccine race
Scientist behind coronavirus shot says next target is cancer
Why the ‘Mother of the Atomic Bomb’ Never Won a Nobel Prize
Lise Meitner developed the theory of nuclear fission, the process Meitner developed the theory of nuclear fission & newly translated letters show she was barred from sharing credit for the Nobel Prize-winning discovery because she was Jewish & a woman.
Meitner helped discover nuclear fission & foresaw its dangerous potential. BUT she refused to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, famously declaring, “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!”
Her gravestone reads, “Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity.” unlocked article