13 Powerful Lessons from Katalin Karikó’s Autobiography

How Personal Experiences Shaped a Revolutionary Mind

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I’ll resume the discussion from the other day. Although it’s not a perfect book, Katalin Karikó’s autobiography is one of the most beautiful and interesting things I’ve read recently. Not so much for the scientific aspect, undoubtedly interesting, but for some… let’s say “advice” that can be gleaned from her story. I’ve gathered some of the passages that struck me the most.

1. The brain is malleable. What we practice, we strengthen.

Even in first grade, in second grade, I worked so hard. I tried to do everything correctly. If it wasn’t right, I started over again.
I worked.
I worked.
I worked.
And it turns out that the brain is malleable. What we practice, we strengthen. I practiced being an excellent student-it was an active practice, the way an aspiring athlete might shoot baskets. Like an athlete, I got better.
School became more natural to me. By third grade, I had dived so completely into school that I earned straight 5s all the way, and I never looked back.
Nor, I’ll say, did I ever stop practicing.

2. Sometimes bullshit men are lauded as heroes

ONCE , IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL , we were…