Katalin Karikó: …I had a very happy childhood. We had a small house. We had two rooms, but we used just one during the winter because it was one you could afford to heat up. And we had a big garden. We had animals like pigs and chickens. We had a vegetable garden…My father was a butcher. My mother, she worked at home and then later she was a bookkeeper. We had a simple life. We didn’t have running water; we had to run to the street to get drinking water which we carried home. And we did not have refrigerators; we put everything in the well to cool it down. But everybody in the neighbourhood was like that. We didn’t have a television set, in at least the first 10 years in my life. It was a little adobe house with a reed roof. And so I went to school and I enjoyed it. I was very happy.

…So if you struggle you learn many things. Also, people who were not nice to me made me work harder with what I have. And then that’s how you have to process. So even in… Actually in school—in high school we are talking about reading this book—, my high school teacher told me—he didn’t like me—and he told me after I graduated to the highest mark, he said that he knows somebody at the university and he will make sure that I will not be accepted.

At first you could see that, “Oh, this is mean and bad news.” But if you say, “Okay. How do I perceive it?” That’s important. “I perceive that I have to work harder, so I have to be the number one. So no question about that. I will be accepted.” If he says: “I will arrange that you will be accepted”, I sit back and work less hard. So you have to see it as: “Okay, he made me work harder.” And then you also learn, every time, you learn that not everybody’s rooting for me. And that was your lesson of the life there—so not everybody wants you to succeed. And you have to think about that. You have to practise, to think: “Okay, what did I learn from it?” Because even the meanest person to tell you anything, you learn: “I won’t do that, I won’t say that to anybody else because it’s hurtful.” So I learn, and then you move on. That’s the simple philosophy. I don’t know, maybe there is such philosophy that exists. But if you live your life then you are so much happier.

…There are always people that… They don’t like if somebody is too successful. Because even in elementary school I already competed nationally in Hungary in a biology competition… I was third best in the country. It was a whole-week competition. In high school I was writing different essays. I always was very inspired and competitive, and not everybody likes that. And some people have power that they can crush you and they try to use it. But you just don’t have to think about too much.

…I might mention also to get into university was very difficult because the whole country… They invited for the oral exams 300 and invited 30 and then accepted 15. So it was very difficult. And because my parents had just elementary school education, I get a chance during the summer to participate at the university in a programme for the underprivileged children. So that it was not the first time in my life I entered a university, but during the summer. And it was very important the university initiated this kind of programme for the children.
Joe Walker: Because your dad did [only] 6 years of elementary, your mom did 8 years.
K Karikó: Yes. And so nobody was high school educated in our family. And so it was important, this kind of action. At the university, I went to Szeged—it is a southern part of Hungary, this university city—because the Biological Research Centre was planned to be built there and started or opened in 1972. So in 1973 I decided that I will go to this city because there is the Biological Research Centre. And that was my dream to work at that place. When I started at the university, we had an early morning, like 7 o’clock, start in the morning, and then 8 o’clock we had so many different classes. Even Saturday we had classes. It was like analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, biochemistry and all of this microbiology… We learn everything. It is not like here in the United States.

J Walker: There’s an interesting question about ego. So ego has kind of been a theme of this conversation. I get the sense that you’re not someone who’s driven by ego or seeking recognition, but obviously many scientists are, and I wonder whether we view that as a problem or potentially like an opportunity that we should harness. Do you think we should be celebrating scientists more?
Karikó: I have to say that at the Gairdner award ceremonies part of it was that I had to talk to high school students. There were 300 of them and each of them could name a hockey player. But when I asked if they could name just one living Canadian scientist, there was no name, they couldn’t. So one question is why we don’t know about all of these discoveries? All of the scientists discovering things.

In the morning, people are taking their pills, saving their lives. They never ask: “Who came up with this? Who’s saving my life? Who is this person? I want to know.”

James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo, they did these checkpoint inhibitors. They got the Nobel prize for it. But do you think that the people who are getting lung cancer and other cancer and surviving because they get these checkpoint inhibitors, that they know: “These are the guys, they saved my life!” No.

And when I ask reporters: “Why are you not writing about them? Why about the celebrities, why is it more important who is breaking up or marrying or whatnot?” They say this is what the people want to hear. But I said: “They read about it because that’s what you are writing. Write about the science. The science could be so important. Looking at the Super Bowl and running with the ball… Running at the [electrophoresis] gel and getting the example or some result is just as exciting.” And why don’t we know about all of these discoveries, what is happening in these days?

My daughter got this non-invasive pregnancy test when they can identify from her blood whether her child has Down syndrome. And I met the guy, Dennis Lo, we got the Lasker Award together. He discovered… This is such an important thing. Do you think that the people who are getting this test non-invasively, that they appreciate, do they know about him?

Where should we start this? In April I will get the Breakthrough Prize, which is supposed to be the Oscar of science—red carpet event. But yes, I think scientists should be recognised. The achievement and the people’s interest. Writing about it—or we are talking about it today, so you are doing your part—so that they would know what they discovered.
Walker: Yeah. And that will then incentivize more brilliant people to become scientists.
K K: Exactly.
W: Yeah. I guess that kind of implies that ego is a useful thing because we’re kind of playing to their egos.
K: Yes, of course you have to have the desire. But when the goal is to be recognised… I think that the goal should be that you should discover and understand and then present and then get some solution, for diseases or something. So many diseases we don’t even know what is the reason and the cause for those symptoms. And without this, we don’t know how to treat them. So we need more scientists and more women. Because the women think differently, they multitask. We need all of the young minds to come, and I can see that less and less people want to come to science. They want to be, I don’t know, an influencer or something.

Ego is the number one thing which… I, personally, never had that desire to be recognised. Again, I can imagine how people doing all of this work and then they are not recognised can go crazy. But this Selye thing… Who cares? 100 years, nobody knows I ever existed. I am doing this, I can do that. And I do not crave that. But there are people who are not like that, and they are miserable. So anyway.

And for me also, I was so on the other side, you know, being very humble, the background, you know, nobody… I mean, coming to America, you could imagine, I had no classmate. I had not a single person I ever seen in my life who would be here. And there is no credit card.

That’s what makes the immigrant great. Because then no matter what, I have to survive. I have my family here with me, I get them here and then what will we do? And then you will be fearless because the whole thing is gambling, coming here with that kind of… even one thousand dollars is not much, you understand? So it completely changes you.

People ask “Why couldn’t you do this in Hungary?” Can you imagine? I was working 9 months in Bethesda [Maryland, at NIH] and I had no street address. I slept in the office, under the desk. We couldn’t afford to live in two different places. We didn’t live in this house, we just rented. But my daughter went to school here and I am 200 miles away. Coming and going weekly. Do you think in Hungary I would do that? No. I would ask somebody, my classmate, somebody to help me out. But nobody was here.