Breaking Through: My Life in Science

A powerful memoir from Katalin Karik, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, whose decades-long research led to the COVID-19 vaccines Katalin Kariks story is an inspiration.Bill Gates Riveting . . . a true story of a brilliant biochemist who never gave up or gave in.Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Katalin Karik has had an unlikely journey. The daughter of a butcher in postwar communist Hungary, Karik grew up in an adobe home that lacked running water, and her family grew their own vegetables. She saw the wonders of nature all around her and was determined to become a scientist. That determination eventually brought her to the United States, where she arrived as a postdoctoral fellow in 1985 with $1,200 sewn into her toddlers teddy bear and a dream to remake medicine. Karik worked in obscurity, battled cockroaches in a windowless lab, and faced outright derision and even deportation threats from her bosses and colleagues. She balked as prestigious research institutions increasingly conflated science and money. Despite setbacks, she never wavered in her belief that an ephemeral and underappreciated molecule called messenger RNA could change the world. Karik believed that someday mRNA would transform ordinary cells into tiny factories capable of producing their own medicines on demand. She sacrificed nearly everything for this dream, but the obstacles she faced only motivated her, and eventually she succeeded. Kariks three-decade-long investigation into mRNA would lead to a staggering achievement: vaccines that protected millions of people from the most dire consequences of COVID-19. These vaccines are just the beginning of mRNAs potential. Today, the medical community eagerly awaits more mRNA vaccinesfor the flu, HIV, and other emerging infectious diseases. Breaking Through isnt just the story of an extraordinary woman. Its an indictment of closed-minded thinking and a testament to one womans commitment to laboring intensely in obscurityknowing she might never be recognized in a culture that is driven by prestige, power, and privilegebecause she believed her work would save lives.