Nobel Prize in Medicine Winner a ‘Patron Saint’ to ‘Undervalued, Unappreciated and Unrecognized’

Katalina Karikó won the award for helping pioneer mRNA technology, which was used to develop the COVID-19 vaccine.

Before that, she fled authoritarian Hungary, failed to earn tenure and toiled as an underpaid research assistant for years, with few taking her ideas seriously. Yet she never gave up on her research.

In this op-ed for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dr. Priya E. Mammen insists that Karikó’s accomplishment is “nothing short of heroic.”