Maintenance“I wouldn’t have arrived there if…” “Le Monde” questions a personality about a decisive moment in his existence. The 67-year-old Hungarian biochemist, vice-president of BioNTech, talks about her exile in the United States and her tenacity in pursuing her research.
If you had to remember one face from the extraordinary epic of the messenger RNA vaccine, it would be his. For a year, Katalin Kariko has been collecting honors. This researcher who, at 67, had never been to Paris, went there twice in June: to receive the great medal of the Academy of Sciences and the L’Oréal-Unesco international prize For women and science. The opportunity for the Hungarian biochemist, now vice-president of the German company BioNTech, to come back to the many pitfalls that have marked her career.
I wouldn’t have come here if…
… If I hadn’t been fired so often from the positions I held. My story is not that of the successful woman who, step by step, advances in her career, chaining promotions to achieve glory and international awards. For a long time, success even eluded me. From the outside, I was the archetypal struggling scientist. And who falls.
I could see that I was making progress, I had confidence and that made me happy despite everything. But the institutions I worked in never showed me much support. On the other hand, they all ended up showing me the door. Without that, I wouldn’t have left Hungary, nor Temple University, the first institution that welcomed me to the United States, nor the University of Pennsylvania afterwards, and I would never have gone to BioNTech…
I ended up understanding that the system is such that it grants financial support, promotions, grants only to those who already gravitate near the center, where the dominant theories of the moment reign. Conversely, originality and independence assert themselves at the periphery. The price to pay is heavy, but that’s what allowed me to stay focused on my goal.
Let’s start with your first sideline, in Hungary. What happened ?
My lab has lost its funding. I was a postdoc there, I was already working on messenger RNA, and when I turned 30, I learned that I had to leave. I loved working in this research center, I loved Hungary. Others dreamed of the United States, me not at all. When I realized that I was going to have to go into exile if I wanted to continue doing the biochemistry that I loved, it terrified me.
Did you have a happy childhood?
Oh yes ! My father was a butcher, my mother an accountant. They hadn’t gone beyond primary education, but they were both intelligent people. My father played the violin, he multiplied two-digit numbers instantly: 28 times 64, boom!
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