A powerful memoir from Katalin Karikó winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
whose decades-long research led to the COVID-19 vaccines “Katalin Karikó’s 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 Karikó has had an unlikely journey. The daughter of a butcher in
postwar communist Hungary Karikó 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 toddler’s
teddy bear and a dream to remake medicine. Karikó 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. Karikó 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. Karikó’s 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 mRNA’s
potential. Today the medical community eagerly awaits more mRNA vaccines—for the flu HIV and
other emerging infectious diseases. Breaking Through isn’t just the story of an extraordinary
woman. It’s an indictment of closed-minded thinking and a testament to one woman’s commitment
to laboring intensely in obscurity—knowing she might never be recognized in a culture that is
driven by prestige power and privilege—because she believed her work would save lives.
