Dr. Katalin Karikó is a Hungarian scientist. For about 30 years she was working in a series of fairly unprestigious jobs, following a very specific line of research that she was fascinated by. She was, unfortunately, about the only one interested in it.

Working on a niche topic that most researchers found too finicky to have practical commercial or medical uses, she struggled to secure grant funding. She also is not much of a networker, despises small talk, and doesn’t evaluate herself highly on the sort of soft skills that she saw other researchers utilize to build relationships with funders and institutions. She preferred to spend her time combing over academic journals, rather than taking meetings or attending conferences. There were a handful of more traditionally successful scientists who saw her brilliance regardless and they frequently subsidized Dr. Karikó’s experiments with funding from their more glamorous work. Despite decades of experience, in the early 2010s she didn’t have her own lab, and made a pretty measly salary.

Eventually she secured a patent for a new molecular structure that her co-author argued could have significant medical uses, but it didn’t make much of a splash outside of her small circle. In 2013 she was offered a job with a small German biotech company that was interested in her research. She would finally have her own lab and a small staff. She didn’t really want to leave academia, her first love, but the salary was better, and most importantly, Dr. Karikó saw an opportunity that perhaps she might be able to see her research “help even one person,” and that that would be worth all of the decades of work.¹

I think a lot of us feel like Dr. Karikó in our work sometimes, particularly when it comes to innovation. We have an idea that we know is worth chasing – be it a new model for discipleship, or a way of talking about a pastoral care issue, or a social entrepreneurship venture, or whatever else – and we cannot seem to make the people around us care about it. We bang our heads against the wall, we try and try to perfect our thing, while the rest of the world goes on spinning without us. That feeling can be isolating. It is Sysiphian, infuriating. Dr. Karikó was frustrated, and she found a solution that to her, felt like a compromise. She wouldn’t get to be in the academic institutions she knew, but maybe she would get to make an impact in a different way, and she would get to do the work she loved. 

Dr. Karikó’s work was on mRNA. The firm that hired her was BioNTech. Which you may have heard of as Pfiezer’s partner on the Covid-19 vaccine. All mRNA vaccines are built off of Dr. Katalin Karikó’s research. She and her collaborator Dr. David Weissman won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2023. 

Needless to say, she helped a lot more than one person. 

Dr. Karikó’s work wasn’t in vaccines, or epidemiology. She didn’t want to work for a biotech company. She knew what she wanted to do, which was to study this one teeny tiny molecule and figure out how scientists could control it. She followed that passion where it led her, even if it was off of her original plan. And she (along with a lot of other scientists) helped save the world.

It is a story of staying the course, and a story of pivoting. It is a story of nothing going your way, and of being in exactly the right place at the right time. So what can we learn from it? 

Knowing what to hold on to and what to let go of is one the most key discernments we can make. Dr. Karikó wanted to follow this line of research more than she wanted to be a prominent researcher. She didn’t allow herself to be diverted by allures of more money or more power, or even by a demotion when she couldn’t secure grant funding. And also, she was willing to walk away from the system where she had spent her entire career, without achieving the validation that any of us would have wanted in that situation. 

She was loyal to herself and her calling, and not to the institution, system, or titles around her. In this way, I think Dr. Karikó’s personality may have helped her. How often do we hear of people staying in toxic work environments or systems because the next promotion, the next boss, the next year will be better? Because we feel like we have to stick it out to prove something to someone? 

We at Ministry Incubators work with a lot of people who, like Dr. Karikó (and maybe like you), have their hearts set on fire by something that the institution around them just is not that interested in, and it’s causing tension. 

Here’s where another important learning comes in – despite what she experienced, Dr. Karikó was a strong collaborator and had partners from a variety of fields of expertise and perspectives. She was passionate about her work but not gatekeeping or protective of it, frequently working with others to expand mRNA’s usage, and often publicly celebrating her collaborators. 

So, how can we find meaningful collaborators, and places where our passions might have room to take root, even if that’s outside the system that we expected? Can we partner with local non-profit organizations or businesses? If our adjudicatory doesn’t want to fund us, can the school system or local government? How can we pursue what God calls us to, and engage faithfully with our context, while holding loosely all the systems, titles, and structures that may not serve us? 

Likely most of us won’t ever have the chance to make the kind of difference Dr. Karikó did, but that doesn’t mean that the work we are called to isn’t vitally important. It will all be worth it if it helps even one person. And, if Dr. Karikó’s life is any example, it might help a lot more than that. 

1. This quote, and most of the story in this blog, come from Bloomberg’s Prognosis podcast, season 7, episode 6. ↩︎