“Science lessons are everywhere, all around me. I climb trees and peer at birds’ nests. I watch hard eggs become naked hatchlings, mouths wide and begging. The hatchlings grow feathers and muscles, leave their nest, begin pecking the ground. I see storks and swallows take flight, then disappear when the weather grows cold. In the spring, they return and start the cycle all over again.”
“In the smokehouse, my sister and I collect fat drippings with a spoon. We drop the fat into a pot; when summer comes, my mother calls a woman to the house. She’s ancient, this woman, carrying knowledge passed down through generations. Under this woman’s direction, we melt the fat, then mix it with sodium carbonate, using a precise ratio she alone seems to understand. Then we pour the mixture into wooden boxes padded with a dishcloth and wait for it to harden into soap, which we slice with a wire. We use soap bars for bathing and shave some into flakes for laundry.”
“Looking back, I understand now that this local ‘soap cooker lady’ was the first biochemist I ever met.”
– Katalin Karikó
winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine
Katalin arrived in the US in 1985 with $1,200 sewn into her
toddler’s teddy bear and a dream to remake medicine.