Lost Women of Science Conversations: Breaking Through

Lost Women of Science Conversations: Breaking Through 

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Announcer: I invite you now to step forward to receive the Nobel Prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.

Announcer: And first to receive the medicine prize is Katalin Karikó, born in Hungary, affiliated to Szeged University in Hungary and University of Pennsylvania in the United States.

Deborah Unger: Welcome to this latest episode in our series, “Lost Women of Science Conversations,” where we talk about authors and artists who've discovered and celebrated female scientists in books, poetry, film, theater, and the visual arts. My name is Deborah Unger, and I am a Senior Managing Editor at “Lost Women of Science.” Today, we're going to do something a bit different. In all our conversations so far, we've talked about people in the pastforgotten female scientists from the 19th and 20th centuries who are no longer with us.

Our subject today is very much with us. That clip at the beginning is from the Nobel Prize Ceremony in 2023, but Dr. Katalin Karikó was essentially forgotten for almost her entire career. That is until she shared the Nobel Prize with her colleague Dr. Drew Weissman. Now everyone knows her as the COVID vaccine lady, even if they don't quite recall her name.

Her science made the production of a COVID vaccine possible in record time. And it was because she spent her whole life working on something that nobody thought was worthwhile. She writes about this in her memoir, “Breaking Through: My Life in Science.” 

It's a story that resonates so strongly with Lost Women of Science that our co- founder and co-host today, Katie Hafner, who's right here with me. Hello, Katie. 

Katie Hafner: Hello, Deborah…

Deborah Unger:  Sat down with Katalin recently to have a conversation about her book. So Katie, let me just ask you, how did you feel talking to a lost woman who actually is really not all that lost.

Katie Hafner: It was so wonderful to talk to a scientist who actually isn't lost. Um, and it was inspiring to meet Kate. That's what she said I could call her. And I'd read her book. I thought it was exceptional. It was exceptional for its rigorous science, but also it was exceptional because of how she went about doing that science throughout her career, she faced indifference, skepticism, and sometimes just outright dismissal of her work for years and years and years.

So she was ignored, she was belittled, she was demoted, and then as if that wasn't bad enough, she was even threatened with deportation back to Hungary. But she never gave up on her belief in the potential of something called messenger RNA. 

Deborah Unger: So before we hear from Kate herself or go more deeply into the science that made the COVID vaccine possible, can you tell us a little bit about where she comes from? How did her life in science actually start? 

Katie Hafner: So, Dr. Katalin Karikó is a Hungarian American biochemist and she was born in 1955 in what was then communist Hungary. She was the daughter of a bookkeeper and a butcher. The next year was the year of the Hungarian uprising, 1956, and her father got caught up in activities that the Soviets deemed anti-communist, and he lost his job.

He'd had his own business as a butcher, and then he was forced to become a day laborer. The family was poor, but it wasn't until later that Kate realized how poor they were. She writes beautifully about her early years, and here she is describing the village. 

Katalin Karikó: We didn't have even at the beginning television. I was first 10 years, I didn't see television. But I didn't know because my neighbors, nobody had refrigerator, nobody had running water. So, you know, that's how we live. Um, we were very happy there.

Katie Hafner: She went to a good primary school and she was always curious. She tells a story that her parents told her about watching her father work and how she explored around her village.

Katalin Karikó: My parents told me that I watched my father opening the pig. I wanted to see something, what is inside. My mom and my older sister, they didn't want to see any part of it, but I was want to see what is inside. You know, I could climb the tree so quickly. And I checked out the nest, whether the eggs are there, whether the little birds are out, and everything was, you know, just my curiosity.

Deborah Unger: So it makes sense that she described it as a very happy time.

Katie Hafner: Oh yeah, but she also talks about the difficult moments too. And one thing about this book, Debra, and Kate in general, is that she's not a whiner. The book is filled with life lessons that she learned from adversity. So, here she is describing her experience at school and university.

Katalin Karikó: In elementary school, I remember that some of my classmates could remember the What the teacher said exactly, and I had no special memory. I had to study, and when I went to the university, others already could speak English, you know, I couldn't. Others already had chemistry class. They knew how to use the pipettes and burettes and other equipment, and I have never seen in my life. And then I always had to kind of catch up extra, uh, classes I had to take to be at the same level. And, you know, I just enjoyed and doing and finally, you know, I did more and more and studied more and then I, I enjoyed studying. 

Katie Hafner: And you know how it's often one great teacher early in your life who could make a huge difference?

Deborah Unger: Oh, yes. I remember mine. Sister Mary Anne, my English literature teacher in high school. Oh, gosh. She was something. 

Katie Hafner: That's funny. Sister Mary Anne. Yeah, I had one in high school who, um, Mr. Langiza, I remember. I liked him a lot. Anyway, Kate, she had a high school teacher and his name was Mr. Tóth. 

Katalin Karikó:  Mr. Tóth. actually lived across the street where my father grew up, and then he knew my father.

So he was, um, sometimes visited our home, and my father respected very much. And he was talking about, you know, that I have a talent to be a scientist. I was like 15 years old, and he said, you could be a scientist. 

Deborah Unger: You could be a scientist.

Katie Hafner: Yes! Kate believed she could too. She started competing in local chemistry and biology competitions and winning them.

So this, the winning of these things, allowed her to travel to a national biology competition in Budapest. And there she won third place. But just as her father had run afoul of the authorities, it looked like the same thing would happen to Kate. 

Deborah Unger: Oh dear. Like father, like daughter. 

Katie Hafner: Mhm. She tells a story about her Russian language teacher, Mr. Bitter. I love this sense of irony she has because that was obviously not his real name, Mr. Bitter. 

But anyway, he felt that Kate had disrespected and disobeyed him. Her high school class was enlisted to pick corn outside of her town one day, and groups of students were given rows to complete. And because her family had cornfields, she was used to the work, and she had reached her quota before the end of the day and before all the other students.

So while she was sitting there relaxing and taking in the sun, having completed her job, Mr. Bitter came along and told her to keep going. But she said she'd done all the work she needed to do, so she pushed back. And because of this, she wrote in her book, and told me, he threatened her and tried to block her from getting into university.

Katalin Karikó: He gave me some notification about that I am against the community and whatnot. And then eventually when I get my last exam at the high school, after it, you know, I get straight A, I was valedictorian. He came to me and he said that he knows somebody at the university and make sure that I will be not accepted. 

When he said I was just shocked, but, uh, you know, retrospect, that's why I say always, uh, thanks to all of those people try to make my life difficult. Because, you know, if he says, I know somebody and I will arrange that you will be accepted. Maybe I will spend less time at the book during the summer, you know, now that he, he said that he will try to prevent me, I, I realized I have to be the best.

And so I have to know everything. 

Deborah Unger: That's a terrible story. 

Katie Hafner: I know, right? 

Deborah Unger: Kind of encapsulating all that is bad about petty tyrants. 

Katie Hafner: I know, right? 

Deborah Unger: But there she is again, making the best of the situation and working even harder. So what happened next? 

Katie Hafner: Well, Mr. Bitter failed in his mission and Kate got into university anyway, and in the book she writes, and I'm quoting here, I learned something important from him.

Not everyone is rooting for me. Not everyone wants good things for me. Not everyone wants my contributions. Some people may even choose to hate me. 

Deborah Unger: That sounds like a bit of foreshadowing.

Katie Hafner: Indeed. In any case, in 1973, she starts at the University of Zaged, and this is where her fascination with messenger RNA begins.

Deborah Unger: And this is where we need to pause to explain what messenger RNA actually is.

Katie Hafner: Okay, I'll try to summarize passages from the book because when Kate got going talking about it, I could not keep up. So deep breath. Essentially, messenger RNA is a messenger molecule that transports genetic information or instructions from DNA to the ribosome, which is a structure found in all cells.

The messenger RNA instructions get translated to form a protein. DNA is the blueprint of what everything in the world becomes. It stays inside the nucleus of a cell. So in order for things to happen, the DNA has to send instructions outside the nucleus. And the molecule that does this is called messenger RNA, or mRNA for short. 

Katie Hafner: And the important part of the process is that the mRNA delivers its message to the ribosome, where proteins are constructed. This could ultimately be used to derail a virus's ability to use the cell to replicate itself. Kate writes in her book that in the five years she was doing her undergraduate degree, genetic sciences were advancing really quickly. And what scientists knew about mRNA was developing and changing. 

And to place us in time, mRNA was discovered in 1961, so a good decade before she was at university. But it wouldn't be until 1984 that it was synthesized in a tube. 

Deborah Unger: And why was that important? 

Katie Hafner: Well, it's important because if you can make a messenger in a lab that tells cells what to do, and you can be specific about what message it sends, then you have a way to influence what goes on inside the body.

Kate began to understand how that could be important in fighting diseases when she was working with lipids or fats in Hungary. So here's how she put it. It's a little complicated, but for her, it was a real kind of aha moment. 

Katalin Karikó: This is a process, you know, it is not like one day you just go to the lab and realize, oh messenger RNA is important. As another graduate, I started to work in the lipid team. 

Katie Hafner: Okay, just a little bit more biology instruction here. Lipids are a class of biomolecules that are insoluble in water. Lipids are used as building blocks for the formation of cellular membranes and they play a really important role as signaling molecules.

So they're key to research in a variety of areas including diseases and in agriculture and the food industry. Liposomes are artificial membranes that act as messengers and they're used in the research for vaccines. 

Katalin Karikó: Eventually, one team needed the lipids, and then we delivered DNA, and we made liposomes. And then, because we have to map through the nucleic acid, through the membrane, and I was undergraduate, I, I didn't know, I don't, I am not a visionary, and said, okay, I, I will do RNA. And then how I started my Ph.D. studies with RNA, and then I synthesized RNA, and then we tried to use it for antiviral, as a short RNA to inhibit viruses.

And then I had to set up a antiviral screening laboratories, you know, all, all of these things from scratch. 

Katie Hafner: So Kate was still in Hungary.

Now working at the Biological Research Center in Zagreb, pursuing this new antiviral compound. And she writes in her book that it was her dream job. But as all scientists know, science can be slow and tedious, and her team was not making the progress that the funders had hoped for. So the funding for her position was pulled.

So it's 1984, and at this point Kate and her husband, Bella, were new parents to a daughter named Susan. And around that time, her father died unexpectedly. So it was a really, really difficult time for her. And she found herself thinking, why me? But then she stopped herself. She remembered a book that her high school teacher, Mr. Tóth, had introduced her to, and the book was called The Stress of Life by Hans Selye, and it had a huge impact on her. It, it still does to this day. And she brings it up in her book a lot as a guide for when she was dealing with difficult situations. 

She remembers, in particular, this one line: “Do not blame, focus on what you can control, transform bad stress into good stress.”

Deborah Unger: Good stress. That almost sounds like an oxymoron, don't you think? 

Katie Hafner: Yes. 

Deborah Unger: But I think I understand what she’s getting at. It's the kind of stress that helps you rise to an occasion, or jump higher, or run faster. 

Katie Hafner: Yeah, that's what I gleaned from it too. I mean, I'd have to read the book, which actually now I really want to, but what she learned from that was that what she needed was to find a new place to work. 

Katalin Karikó: I was very happy in Hungary. I had my daughter, I had my little family, and then no job. And then I tried to find job first in Hungary, didn't even responded my letters. Then I tried in Europe, closer to home. Everybody responded there from London, from Madrid, and Montpelier.

They were the one that using this short RNA for antiviral compound. So they were similar things. They did what I was doing in Hungary, but they want me to bring the money with me. So I had to realize that I have to maybe go to the United States. And then I applied for a couple of place. Everybody responded, and the quickest was in Temple University. In a couple of months, they say that I can start. 

Katie Hafner: So in 1985, really quickly, Kate moved her family all the way to Philadelphia to work as a postdoc in a lab in the biochemistry department at Temple University under a boss who was doing similar work to what Kate had been doing before in Hungary–looking into this short RNA molecule that held promise as an antiviral.

So at first, Kate writes that her new boss was charismatic and helpful and picked her up from the airport, and was a great host. But soon, she learned that this same guy had an explosive temper. He would yell, he would slam doors, and he would berate students. And she found herself wondering, is this how things are done in America?

Katalin Karikó: I think most of the people, they are not black and white or bad or, you know, they are, can be nice and sometimes is not. He liked me and I’d work very hard and that's what he wanted, me to work in his lab forever. 

Katie Hafner: But when it looked like that might not happen, his dark side surfaced. 

Katalin Karikó: But when I mentioned that I get a job offer from Johns Hopkins, then he got very angry.

I spent there already three years and we had the many good publication, and, uh, in “Lancet” and “Biochem,” good papers. In one issue of “Biochemistry,” we had three papers. And, but he, he wanted this to continue and, uh, you know, he threatened, uh, because he thought that I will be afraid if he say that, you know, he will deport me and I will rush back, but he didn't know me that you can reach the opposite.

Deborah Unger: That's a horrible way to treat anyone. 

Katie Hafner: Yes, but even facing the threat of deportation, Kate never felt sorry for herself. After the break, we’ll hear how Kate manages.

Katie Hafner: So before the break, we heard about Kate’s situation with a boss who threatened to have her deported for leaving his lab. In our interview, I asked Kate what she learned from that experience.

You say in the book that you learned a really important lesson, which is that it was really about him and not about you, that your work and the science that you were doing was for him.

Katalin Karikó: Yes, yes. And, uh, looking back, I, I also concluded that what, uh, suggests to everybody, when you are terminated, you don't start to agonize on why you, and feel sorry for yourself, immediately focus on what next, what I will do next. And here this was, I had no recommendation letter. 

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Katie Hafner: Kate's boss was successful at getting her offer withdrawn from Johns Hopkins, but she had a plan. She decided to write to people who didn't like her boss and they would understand her predicament. 

Deborah Unger: And the plan worked? 

Katie Hafner: Yes, and no. She got a job, but that complicated her life. The job was in Bethesda, Maryland, and her family was in Philadelphia.

So for a year, she commuted back and forth until she finally got back to Philly in 1989. And in her book, Kate pauses is here, and she mentions that we've reached the part of her story that journalists have characterized as “a series of unfortunate events.” 

Deborah Unger: I'd say they've already been “a series of unfortunate events.”

Katie Hafner: Well, we would need a much longer podcast to get into every single incremental twist and turn that happened during Kate's time at the University of Pennsylvania, which is where she ended up. So, let's summarize. In her book, she writes, “My time at Penn would span decades. These decades split into three distinct episodes involving two different departments and three very different physician partners.

My three Penn episodes, for all their differences, followed a similar pattern, a series of setbacks punctuated by moments of extraordinary breakthrough. The breakthroughs, for the most part, remained almost entirely invisible. The setbacks, though, were on full display.” 

Deborah Unger: Oh, I'm guessing, Katie, that this is the time when she experienced some of those things you listed in the intro: being ignored, belittled, demoted, et cetera, et cetera.

Katie Hafner: Correct. She applied for grant after grant, and she never received funding, which in academia is crucial because it's the way academics pay themselves and prove that they should actually be there. So this was a challenge for Kate who told me she liked writing grants despite never getting any.

In the book, and in our interview, she attributes a lot of this lack of interest and, and skepticism to the fact that mRNA is really difficult to work with. 

Katalin Karikó: They said that, I hate to work with RNA. When I run it, everything is a smear, is always degraded. I said, because your laboratory is contaminated, your apparatus is contaminated.

But the people did not, they thought that, no, no, no, it's just the RNA is such. 

Katie Hafner: Penn tells her in no uncertain terms, you need to get funding or you are out. And well, she basically takes a demotion to continue her work on mRNA. That is how devoted she was to this. She just continued to believe in its potential.

And this is what she told me.

Katalin Karikó: So the messenger RNA is not something that the scientists created. They discovered and it is present in our cells. And that's the information for making the protein. And it seemed that if we could deliver this information to a cell, the cell will do that protein, which we want to investigate.

And it seemed like so logical, it will be good for something. 

Katie Hafner: And of course, it was good for something, but it would still be years before Kate understood exactly what. A lot changed when she met Dr. Drew Weissman, the man she would later go on to share a Nobel Prize with. 

Deborah Unger: Oh Katie, I think I've heard this story before. It involves a photocopier, doesn't it? 

Katie Hafner: Yes, yes, correct. Their first meeting was a chance encounter at a copy machine at Penn in 1997. So Kate did a lot of photocopying. She liked to make copies of interesting articles from journals like “Nature and Science.” And there was one photocopier in particular that she sort of considered hers.

And then one day…

Katalin Karikó: I could see this guy who I have never seen before, and he was copying also, and so I, you know, tried to brag about a little bit that, you know, I am doing, I am here, I'm doing RNA. 

Katie Hafner: So she meets Drew, an immunologist who had just started his own lab at Penn. He was looking into new vaccines for infectious diseases like HIV.

Kate writes that in those days she was a bit of a street vendor for mRNA, selling it to anyone who might want it, and Drew was a buyer. Here's how she described it in her book. “Drew and I were very different, but each of us had exactly the knowledge and skills that the other needed. I was an RNA scientist who didn't know much about immunology, and he was an immunologist without RNA experience.”

So let's fast forward here to Kate's next aha moment. She ends up working with Drew and they make a pivotal discovery. Their experiments showed that mRNA was actually causing inflammation. which was bad. It meant that it would not be able to deliver a useful message, a useful vaccine. 

Katalin Karikó: It was inflammatory.

I mean, I, I was shocked that I was already at that point, I was working like 10 years developing messenger RNA for therapy. 

Katie Hafner: So they needed to figure out why the mRNA was causing inflammation. And that took time. 

Katalin Karikó: As a scientist, you always have something that nobody did that, and somehow you think that, oh, maybe we can do it, and try this, and try that, and try many, many different things, and maybe something will work.

But you just so believe, you know, you just, somebody would say, oh, cannot be done, you know, even you feel stronger that you will do it. And so that's eventually how we could make our messenger RNA, which was modified and was not immunogenic. And we were so elated. 

Deborah Unger: So in this case, they found that modified mRNA was not immunogenic, meaning it didn't work against the virus? 

Katie Hafner: Correct. Unmodified mRNA created an inflammatory response, but when they modified mRNA, there was no inflammation. Kate says that this breakthrough in 2005 was the one they'd been waiting for. It was amazing news, and it meant that the world could begin developing safe mRNA therapies.

Deborah Unger: So did the world take notice this time? Did Penn finally recognize Kate and Drew for their work? 

Katie Hafner: Well, no. The crazy thing is that Kate and Drew's big discovery didn't get much attention at all at the time. Okay, now fast forward eight years to 2013. She's still a researcher. It's basically a dead end, and so she finally decides to leave Penn and academia behind for the private sector.

One day, she's told about a company called BioNTech. The founder, Uga Zahin, tells her about all the work they've been doing with RNA. 

Katalin Karikó: I wanted a company who can make clinical grade RNA. Uh, for cancer, they injected the RNA in a patient already. They had a small clinical trial ongoing in 2013.

And then when I went there and I talked to Ugur, I want to say that I would just stay if I work on nucleoside modified RNA. That's what, you know, I believed that it will be, you know, the solution. And he said, okay. And that's how I was hired. 

Katie Hafner: This was your moment. Your moment, yeah, that's amazing. I mean, you must have thought, okay, finally, finally, finally.

Katalin Karikó: Yeah, I have to say that in the age of 58, the old lady get two job offers. One from BioNTech and other is Moderna. Uh, both of them is vice president, but now that looking back, you know, old lady, oh, still wanted. That's how I felt. 

Deborah Unger: Oh, that's almost heartbreaking. “Old Lady Still Wanted,” and she's worked so hard all her life because she believed that her insight into mRNA would be useful.

Katie Hafner: I know, kind of heartbreaking, but inspiring. Kate didn't see it as heartbreaking, and the rest, I guess, is history. So it's early 2020. 

Katalin Karikó: The CEO and the founder of BioNTech was reading in January about in China, this mysterious disease occurred and he realized that some people get infected and not having symptoms.

He was worried that it will be spread and it will be all over because you know, if there is a infectious disease and you know, you drop dead, you are not traveling, but you know, if you have no symptoms, you'd spread. And then he decided that we have to do something. That's how it happened. 

Deborah Unger: So they'd been working on mRNA for vaccines for years for flu, and then they realized that it could also be used for COVID.

Katie Hafner: Right. You'll remember that the COVID vaccines were called the fastest vaccines ever developed. Well that's in many ways thanks to Kate and Drew and their work on mRNA in all those years preceding. Kate didn't develop the COVID vaccine itself, but her discoveries made its development possible. 

Deborah Unger: It must have been remarkable to finally get some recognition after all those years of skepticism and dismissal.

Katie Hafner: You know, Kate is extremely humble and she's careful not to take any credit for the actual making of the COVID 19 vaccine. But when I interviewed her, she did describe the deeply emotional moment of her and Drew going to Penn to get their vaccines alongside the frontline healthcare workers. 

Katalin Karikó: I arrived there and, and the hallway already in the other room, line of people every, you know, six feet apart, getting the vaccine.

And then the new chairman of neurosurgery just said that, you know, these are the people who created this vaccine. And everybody started to clapping there, you know. And then I was like, you know, that was the effect I got. Oh my God, you know, these people, how happy that they have this vaccine because they go home to their family and they didn't know how they could might infect.

And those are the real heroes in my eyes, all of the healthcare workers, you know, taking care of the patient and risking their own lives and then their families. I never risk my life, you know, I just have fun in the lab. But those people were the ones that are the real heroes. 

Deborah Unger: Well, I might beg to differ here. I really do think she is a hero.

Katie Hafner: Oh yeah, and if you think that's humility at work, when I asked her about the Nobel Prize, she said she didn't really put a whole lot of value on awards like that, but just knowing that she had helped people, real people, now that made her happy.

Katalin Karikó: I have to say that, uh, getting a letter from Meadowbrook, uh, elderly home where they described that they received the vaccine, and one week later people started to get positive and nobody died.

And then they celebrated and how happy they were and they sent me pictures that now that the children can visit their elderly parents in that home. For me, that was more important. It's more influence on me than getting any kind of prize. I have to say honestly that. People would say, yeah, because you get it.

No, even before it, at 40 years, I didn't get anything, not even a grant. And I still could go with all of the enthusiasm, feeling that, okay, what I'm doing is important. And that's what you have to, and it is fulfilling to know that, okay, I was part of it helping others. 

Deborah Unger: Helping others. And after such a long and difficult journey.

Katie, what's your sense of why she wrote the book? 

Katie Hafner: Well, for starters, to tell the story, of course, but also to let the story, I mean, this is what I think, serve as a lesson about resilience. 

Katalin Karikó: You know, when I am invited, uh, different, uh, places, and then there, there is an option to talk to students, I will talk to the students, because, you know, they need, uh, some, some guidance.

And, uh, so you know, if my book helped scientists to get somebody like me just through the book, be a cheerleader for them, you know, come on, you, you can do it. They feel that they work for it and then they will be very proud and uh, you need that. 

Deborah Unger: You know, we all need cheerleaders like Kate. 

Katie Hafner: Yeah. I mean, you can say that again. And you know, at the very beginning of our conversation, I asked her about a particular thing she wrote in the book about being a scientist. One thing that you start out with is that you write: “To understand my story, you must understand that what may look like stillness is sometimes the complete opposite.”

What did you mean by that? 

Katalin Karikó: You know,  I have to mention that writing the, uh, this book was never in my mind. And when I was writing, I thought that everything is so boring for an outsider. Scientists, what they are doing is just nothing. They just sit there, you know, maybe something they are doing with their hands.

And, you know, there is no drama to show them the excitement, uh, the, process of discovery, you know, it is very difficult. How can I explain that? You know, and an outsider can see me as unsuccessful, you know, for years, but I myself, I felt that I am very successful every day. I solve the technical problems there and many questions were there and I could answer some.

And then, of course, I get more questions with the experiments and it was full of excitement. How many times I told myself, oh, I wish I would be a week older? So by that time I would know the outcome or a month older, you know, I always ask to be older. It is so many excitement there, but it is difficult to present it.

And then that's what I thought that somehow I have to explain it. 

Deborah Unger: And the book does exactly that. And thank you, Katie, for sharing your conversation with Kate with us.

Katie Hafner: My pleasure. 

Deborah Unger: This has been “Lost Women of Science Conversations.” Dr. Katalin Karikó’s book, “Breaking Through: My Life in Science,” is now out in paperback.

This episode was hosted by me, Deborah Unger. 

Katie Hafner: And me, Katie Hafner. Gabriela Saldivia was our producer and our sound engineer for this episode, thanks to my co executive producer, Amy Scharf, and to Eowyn Burtner, our program manager. 

Lexi Atiya was our fact checker, Lizzie Younan composes all our music, and Lily Whear designed our art. We had help with the science from Dr. Ellen Lyon. 

Deborah Unger: Thanks also to Jeff DelViscio at our publishing partner, “Scientific American.”

“Lost Women of Science” is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Anne Wojcicki Foundation. We're distributed by PRX. 

Katie Hafner: If you've enjoyed this conversation, please go to our website, lostwomenofscience.org, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

That's lostwomenofscience.org. Oh, and don't forget to click on that donate button. And wherever you listen to your podcasts, please share it and give us a rating. See you next time.

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