Katalin is the Hungarian form of Catherine — from the Greek katharos (pure). **Katalin Karikó (born 1955)** — **Hungarian-American biochemist whose forty years of research on messenger RNA — much of it ignored, defunded, and demoted by academia — made the rapid development of the BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines possible in 2020**. **Shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Drew Weissman** for the discovery of nucleoside base modifications enabling mRNA therapeutics. **Demoted at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995 when grant after grant was rejected; "every night I was working: grant, grant, grant. And it came back: no, no, no"** — quoted in her 2023 Nobel lecture. **Moved to BioNTech in 2013 as Senior Vice President**. **Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2022)**.
Subject of her memoir *Breaking Through* (2023).
Katalin reduces to eight — the number of mRNA Nobel.