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- Foggy
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This is a thread I've thought about, I don't think we have one like it, but sometimes I'm still outraged by how little impact the awesome women in the world have.
I live in North Carolina, and Europeans settled here a few hundred years ago, and what did the awesome, intelligent, strong-willed women do back then?
They cooked and sewed and washed and served. Most of them weren't allowed to learn how to read, which condemned them to a life of ignorance.
Don't tell me that they weren't smart as hell. Don't tell me it wasn't a crime to keep them ignorant and in servitude.
Hundreds of years later, I've met their descendants, and I realized that their ancestors were victims of, not a single crime, but a criminal culture.
And this is my way of making a small dent in the unfairness of it all.
So this is Fei-Fei Li, born in Beijing, currently the co-director of the Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and here's her bio if you'd like to learn more about her.
I live in North Carolina, and Europeans settled here a few hundred years ago, and what did the awesome, intelligent, strong-willed women do back then?
They cooked and sewed and washed and served. Most of them weren't allowed to learn how to read, which condemned them to a life of ignorance.
Don't tell me that they weren't smart as hell. Don't tell me it wasn't a crime to keep them ignorant and in servitude.
Hundreds of years later, I've met their descendants, and I realized that their ancestors were victims of, not a single crime, but a criminal culture.
And this is my way of making a small dent in the unfairness of it all.
So this is Fei-Fei Li, born in Beijing, currently the co-director of the Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and here's her bio if you'd like to learn more about her.
Don't mind me, I just fell out of a coconut tree. ![🥥](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f965.svg)
![🌴](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f334.svg)
- Foggy
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Representative Jasmine Crockett (D - Texas
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Rep._Jasmine_Crockett_-_118th_Congress.jpg/1703px-Rep._Jasmine_Crockett_-_118th_Congress.jpg)
Went to law school because she was victim of a hate crime ... took on several Black Lives Matter cases pro bono ... huh. Sam Bankman-Fried gave her $1 million for the campaign. She's the freshman class representative, whatever that means.
And you saw the vid, lo and behold, the incredible vid. "I hope and pray that my parents love me half as much as [Joe Biden] loves his child."
There were Republicans in the room who had no idea what she was talking about.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Rep._Jasmine_Crockett_-_118th_Congress.jpg/1703px-Rep._Jasmine_Crockett_-_118th_Congress.jpg)
Went to law school because she was victim of a hate crime ... took on several Black Lives Matter cases pro bono ... huh. Sam Bankman-Fried gave her $1 million for the campaign. She's the freshman class representative, whatever that means.
And you saw the vid, lo and behold, the incredible vid. "I hope and pray that my parents love me half as much as [Joe Biden] loves his child."
There were Republicans in the room who had no idea what she was talking about.
Don't mind me, I just fell out of a coconut tree. ![🥥](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f965.svg)
![🌴](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f334.svg)
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She was awesome.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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Perfect. Can’t wait to see all that is shared on this thread. Thank you to Ms. Li and Representative Crockett.
- northland10
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- Foggy
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Marilyn Lovell, RIP
![](https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/U2GKBHZ7PDSEVDV77WX7QRVL5Q.JPG)
“For four days,” she later said, “I didn’t know if I was going to be a wife or a widow.”
+++++++++oughta be some snippets, but no++++++++++
“For four days,” she later said, “I didn’t know if I was going to be a wife or a widow.”
+++++++++oughta be some snippets, but no++++++++++
As Capt. Lovell flew on several Gemini missions with increasing responsibility, it fell to Mrs. Lovell to raise and discipline their four children largely by herself and endure the sexist coverage of the day. (“Marilyn Lovell is cute, active and efficient,” one profile noted. “She comes by the first two traits naturally.”)
Like other astronaut wives, Mrs. Lovell put her husband’s dream of going to the moon above all else. She hid a pregnancy from him for four months, fearing it might send him to the back of the line.
“The wives have it the roughest,” she told the Associated Press in 1968. “The guys get to take the ride.”
“For some reason or another the astronaut wives just never discussed anything that would worry their husbands before they went on a flight,” she told NBC News. “I mean, we kept everything to ourselves.”
Mrs. Lovell was an active member of the Astronaut Wives Club, an informal group that counseled and supported other astronaut wives. But after the Apollo 13 incident, she would not allow him to travel into space again. Capt. Lovell worked in the telecommunications industry and ran a restaurant near Chicago.
Their marriage was one of the few astronaut unions to survive the stress of spaceflight. That April in 1970, Mrs. Lovell never gave up hope.
Don't mind me, I just fell out of a coconut tree. ![🥥](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f965.svg)
![🌴](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f334.svg)
- pipistrelle
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I don't know where to put this so this seems as good a spot as anywhere. Vile creature jumps on car and smashes in back window. Mother of two (kids were in the car) jumps out and ultimately pushes him down. His employer turns him in. His lawyer says there's more to the story but isn't yet coughing up what it is. (Narrator: This is the story.) Watch the video (posted a YouTube link because I can't get the NBC one to work).
Man arrested after a gun-toting motorcyclist was seen on video assaulting a mother in Philadelphia
Man arrested after a gun-toting motorcyclist was seen on video assaulting a mother in Philadelphia
A man who prosecutors in Philadelphia say was captured on video vandalizing a woman’s car, pointing a gun and head-butting her has been arrested.
Cody Heron, 26, is charged with possession of an instrument of crime, recklessly endangering another person and aggravated assault, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said.
Heron is accused of assaulting a woman and her two children after the woman's car was hit on the driver's side Sunday night near City Hall, prosecutors said. He was among a large group of ATV, motorcycle and dirt-bike riders in the area, officials say.
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Dr Birute Galdikas is known as one of the "trimates" - Jane Goodall, Diann Fossey, and Birute Galdikas. Dr Louis Leakey encouraged each of these women to pursue their interests in studying various primates.
Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas is a scientist, conservationist and educator working closely with orangutans in their natural habitat in Borneo, Indonesia. Dr. Galdikas is an orangutan researcher who first documented the long orangutan birth interval and recorded more than 400 types of food consumed by orangutans, providing unprecedented detail about orangutan ecology. Galdikas has contributed to the release of more than 1,000 rehabilitated orangutans back into the wild and has rescued and relocated an additional 200 wild orangutans into the wild. She serves as president and is the co-founder of Orangutan Foundation International, an organization dedicated to protecting wild orangutans in Borneo and their rain forest habitat.
“A know-it-all is a person who knows everything except for how annoying he is.”
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I love orangutans!
I did a fund raiser for my birthday a few years ago for one of these organizations that train orphans to be released back into the wild.
Also, great respect for all these amazing women! Thanks Foggy for starting the thread.![Big Hug :bighug:](./images/smilies/bighug.gif)
![Lovestruck :lovestruck:](./images/smilies/lovestruck.gif)
![Lovestruck :lovestruck:](./images/smilies/lovestruck.gif)
I did a fund raiser for my birthday a few years ago for one of these organizations that train orphans to be released back into the wild.
Also, great respect for all these amazing women! Thanks Foggy for starting the thread.
![Big Hug :bighug:](./images/smilies/bighug.gif)
- John Thomas8
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Another first:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/386 ... gerial-job
San Francisco Giants coach Alyssa Nakken has interviewed for the team's open managerial job, becoming the first woman to speak with an organization formally about leading its on-field operations, sources confirmed to ESPN on Sunday.
Nakken, 33, was the first female full-time coach in Major League Baseball when she was hired in January 2020 by Gabe Kapler, who the Giants fired in September. As a major league assistant coach, she has worked with players for the last four seasons, and in April 2022 she filled in as first-base coach for a game following an ejection.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/386 ... gerial-job
San Francisco Giants coach Alyssa Nakken has interviewed for the team's open managerial job, becoming the first woman to speak with an organization formally about leading its on-field operations, sources confirmed to ESPN on Sunday.
Nakken, 33, was the first female full-time coach in Major League Baseball when she was hired in January 2020 by Gabe Kapler, who the Giants fired in September. As a major league assistant coach, she has worked with players for the last four seasons, and in April 2022 she filled in as first-base coach for a game following an ejection.
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This video came up in my YouTube recommendations thus morning. What a great woman!
Oops! I see it’s the same video as was already posted but you can’t have too many orangutan videos (like cat videos).
Oops! I see it’s the same video as was already posted but you can’t have too many orangutan videos (like cat videos).
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I wholeheartedly agree with that. Anyone who missed it the first time gets another chance to see it. The oranguatans are wonderful and Dr Galdikas is also pretty fabulous.jemcanada2 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2023 8:02 am This video came up in my YouTube recommendations thus morning. What a great woman!
Oops! I see it’s the same video as was already posted but you can’t have too many orangutan videos (like cat videos).
“A know-it-all is a person who knows everything except for how annoying he is.”
— Demetri Martin
— Demetri Martin
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https://ao.pressreader.com/article/284210880292924
The Night Stalker by Philip Martin
My sister stalks the night. She tells my mother she is afraid to go to sleep. So she walks. She goes into her craft room. She goes outside and lights a cigarette. The hospice nurse says let her smoke, so long as she does not smoke around her oxygen.
Eventually exhaustion overtakes her. She falls into fitful, shallow, medicated sleep in an armchair or across the daybed in the spare room, her knees on the floor. But mostly she walks laps around a four-bedroom house.
She signed up for this. She quit the chemo and got two or three months of real quality out of it. For a couple of months she wasn’t sick all the time. She got a respite. But her cancer got a respite too. Her cancer recovered its strength. It’s flexing now. It’s hard and tight in her gut. It doesn’t want her to eat. It laughs at her fentanyl patches.
My sister still has good days. She goes into her craft room and stitches 30 packets of Halloween favors together for a grandkid’s class. She goes to Walmart. To Aldi. She doesn’t drive, but she navigates the stores.
![]()
Thirty years ago my sister was a teacher in Grand Saline, Texas, a place that has a certain reputation. You can Google it. Grand Saline was where, in 2014, an elderly Methodist minister named Charles Moore decided to immolate himself in protest of what he called his “hometown’s history of violent racism.”
Depending on who you talk to, my sister was either run out of Grand Saline, or she shook the dust of that town off her feet as she left town. But for a while she was a fourth-grade teacher there, and assigned the kids in her class some books to read. One of those was a retelling of an African folk tale by Louisiana-born writer Mildred Pitts Walter called “Brother to the Wind.” (Walter, as I write this, is still going strong at 101 years old; she had been a teacher and civil rights activist who took up writing children’s books in her late 40s after she realized there were very few books for young readers about Black children written by Black authors.)
“Brother to the Wind” is about an African boy named Emeke who dreams of flying like a bird. Some of the parents of my sister’s students didn’t like that book (the particular edition my sister used is beautifully illustrated by interracial husbandand-wife team Leo and Diane Dillon). Some of them said a drawing of a goat’s head in the book looked satanic to them. Some objected to Christmas decorations in my sister’s classroom noting—I’m not making this up—that “Santa” was an anagram for “Satan.” Another parent offered the opinion that impressionable chil
dren shouldn’t be exposed to fairy tales.
My sister’s then 7-year-old daughter was harassed at school. “What’s a devil worshipper?” she asked her mother.
My sister began receiving anonymous threatening calls late at night. They held a town meeting where one parent said she didn’t want her child to read anything about “death, abuse, divorce, religion or any other issue” at school. Some of the parents literally told my sister they didn’t want her to teach their children “to think.”
They claimed my sister—a church-going Methodist—was an atheist and practicing Satanist. Some of them even called her the Antichrist. They demanded that the school board fire her. The school board, comprised as it was of spineless simpletons, was preparing to do just that when my sister resigned.
And sued those idiot parents for defamation. And won.
I can’t tell you how big the settlement was, but my sister and her husband moved to Dallas where they bought a house in Highland Park next door to a starting defenseman for the Dallas Stars hockey team.
I never wrote about my sister and her adventures in Grand Saline, but Nat Hentoff, the irascible columnist, jazz critic, novelist, free speech advocate and all-around troublemaker, did. In his nationally syndicated column he called her an example of an “authentic American.”
He didn’t write more about her because she didn’t return his calls. She didn’t want to be written about. She didn’t know she was in Hentoff’s 1998 book “Living the Bill of Rights: How to be an Authentic American” until I told her.
Moving to Highland Park would be a good place to end the movie about my sister, but life seldom wraps up things that neatly. My sister was in her early 30s then; I’m sure she couldn’t have imagined ending up where she is now.
Most of us only talk big. Most of us are lucky that we are never really tested in a public way, we never have to declare and stick by our professed beliefs. Most of us live with mitigation and compromise and aren’t asked to do anything extraordinary. That’s a good thing, to live without undue drama. Most of us are never called upon to do anything genuinely brave.
And so we can maintain, at least to ourselves, that if we were ever to be pressured, we would do the right thing, even if it was the hard thing.
My sister stalks the night. She cannot sleep. That’s the irony: She should sleep well.
"Mickey Mouse and I grew up together." - Ruthie Tompson, Disney animation checker and scene planner and one of the first women to become a member of the International Photographers Union in 1952.
- Foggy
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Oh, that was great.
Don't mind me, I just fell out of a coconut tree. ![🥥](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f965.svg)
![🌴](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f334.svg)
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![Yeah That :yeahthat:](./images/smilies/yeahthat.gif)
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
- keith
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Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 1647 – 13 January 1717) (from Wikipedia)
was a German entomologist, naturalist and scientific illustrator. She was one of the earliest European naturalists to document observations about insects directly. Merian was a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family.
Merian received her artistic training from her stepfather, Jacob Marrel, a student of the still life painter Georg Flegel. Merian published her first book of natural illustrations in 1675. She had started to collect insects as an adolescent. At age 13, she raised silkworms. In 1679, Merian published the first volume of a two-volume series on caterpillars; the second volume followed in 1683. Each volume contained 50 plates that she engraved and etched. Merian documented evidence on the process of metamorphosis and the plant hosts of 186 European insect species. Along with the illustrations Merian included descriptions of their life cycles.
In 1699, Merian travelled to Dutch Guiana to study and record the tropical insects native to the region. In 1705, she published Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. Merian's Metamorphosis has been credited with influencing a range of naturalist illustrators. Because of her careful observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly, Merian is considered by David Attenborough to be among the more significant contributors to the field of entomology.[2] She discovered many new facts about insect life through her studies.[3] Until her careful, detailed work, it had been thought that insects were "born of mud" by spontaneous generation. Her pioneering research in illustrating and describing the various stages of development, from egg to larva to pupa and finally to adult, dispelled the notion of spontaneous generation and established the idea that insects undergo distinct and predictable life cycles.
was a German entomologist, naturalist and scientific illustrator. She was one of the earliest European naturalists to document observations about insects directly. Merian was a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family.
Merian received her artistic training from her stepfather, Jacob Marrel, a student of the still life painter Georg Flegel. Merian published her first book of natural illustrations in 1675. She had started to collect insects as an adolescent. At age 13, she raised silkworms. In 1679, Merian published the first volume of a two-volume series on caterpillars; the second volume followed in 1683. Each volume contained 50 plates that she engraved and etched. Merian documented evidence on the process of metamorphosis and the plant hosts of 186 European insect species. Along with the illustrations Merian included descriptions of their life cycles.
In 1699, Merian travelled to Dutch Guiana to study and record the tropical insects native to the region. In 1705, she published Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. Merian's Metamorphosis has been credited with influencing a range of naturalist illustrators. Because of her careful observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly, Merian is considered by David Attenborough to be among the more significant contributors to the field of entomology.[2] She discovered many new facts about insect life through her studies.[3] Until her careful, detailed work, it had been thought that insects were "born of mud" by spontaneous generation. Her pioneering research in illustrating and describing the various stages of development, from egg to larva to pupa and finally to adult, dispelled the notion of spontaneous generation and established the idea that insects undergo distinct and predictable life cycles.
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls Would scarcely get your feet wet
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Coooool!
"Mickey Mouse and I grew up together." - Ruthie Tompson, Disney animation checker and scene planner and one of the first women to become a member of the International Photographers Union in 1952.
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Very cool!keith wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2023 8:36 am Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 1647 – 13 January 1717) (from Wikipedia)
Her pioneering research in illustrating and describing the various stages of development, from egg to larva to pupa and finally to adult, dispelled the notion of spontaneous generation and established the idea that insects undergo distinct and predictable life cycles.
The spontaneous generation theory was another medieval holdover that probably stood in the way of effective scientific research. Not unlike the "four humors" theory of Hippocrates, where disease was a function of blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile being out of balance. That notion survived for far too long, blocking much original inquiry into medicine.
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Off Topic
Sidenote: back in those days there was no "Switzerland". The Merian family resided in Bale (Basel), one of the several fairly independant states that made up the Helvetic Confederation.keith wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2023 8:36 am Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 1647 – 13 January 1717) (from Wikipedia)
was a German entomologist, naturalist and scientific illustrator. She was one of the earliest European naturalists to document observations about insects directly. Merian was a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family.
https://youtu.be/-5PyrJUmKXM
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I wonder about glib statements about ye olde folke believing in spontaneous generation. It is too reminiscent of shaming the same people for believing in a flat earth. Surely people in tune with nature's rhythms, out in fields and woods most days, would have a better understanding of life's cycles. Lots of flies there – oh they've laids of what? eggs – now there are lots of maggots there – what could be going on?
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It's the social class thing of yesteryear, the poor farmer who made the knowledgable observations hand on, and the rich city dwelling couch potato who was trying to make the world work for him without getting hands dirty.Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2023 1:45 pm I wonder about glib statements about ye olde folke believing in spontaneous generation. It is too reminiscent of shaming the same people for believing in a flat earth. Surely people in tune with nature's rhythms, out in fields and woods most days, would have a better understanding of life's cycles. Lots of flies there – oh they've laids of what? eggs – now there are lots of maggots there – what could be going on?
![Twisted Evil :twisted:](./images/smilies/icon_twisted.gif)
Of course in those days a farmer had likely little education, did not know to write, so his knowledge was lost when not handed along by word of mouth within the family.
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Well, lets be clear what we are talking about.
https://www.britannica.com/science/spon ... generation
https://www.britannica.com/science/spon ... generation
spontaneous generation
biological theory
Written and fact-checked by
Last Updated: Sep 5, 2023 • Article History
spontaneous generation, the hypothetical process by which living organisms develop from nonliving matter; also, the archaic theory that utilized this process to explain the origin of life. According to that theory, pieces of cheese and bread wrapped in rags and left in a dark corner, for example, were thus thought to produce mice, because after several weeks there were mice in the rags. Many believed in spontaneous generation because it explained such occurrences as the appearance of maggots on decaying meat.
By the 18th century it had become obvious that higher organisms could not be produced by nonliving material. The origin of microorganisms such as bacteria, however, was not fully determined until Louis Pasteur proved in the 19th century that microorganisms reproduce. See also biopoiesis.
Hic sunt dracones
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https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/10/p ... streatment
'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Nobel Prize-winning researcher Katalin Karikó
Eight current and former colleagues of Karikó told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the University repeatedly shunned Karikó and her research, despite its groundbreaking potential
By BEN BINDAY 10/26/23 2:53am
Credit: ABHIRAM JUVVADI
Three weeks ago, Penn hosted a flash mob for Katalin Karikó after she won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine. But the celebration masked a tumultuous, decades-long relationship between Karikó and the University.
Karikó, an adjunct professor of neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her past research into mRNA technology alongside co-laureate and Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research at the Medical School Drew Weissman. Karikó and Weissman's research was critical for the development of the COVID-19 vaccines — from which Penn has earned around $1.2 billion.
"At a University built around [a] Franklin spirit, there are no better exemplars of these character traits than our Nobel laureates, Dr. Kati Karikó and Dr. Drew Weissman," Penn President Liz Magill said at a press conference the day the prize was named.
However, eight current and former colleagues of Karikó told The Daily Pennsylvanian that — over the course of three decades — the University repeatedly shunned Karikó and her research, despite its groundbreaking potential.
The colleagues told a story of a researcher whose work ethic helped her succeed against all odds — including doubtful administrators, language barriers, and a system that cuts costs by demoting researchers who fail to earn grant funding.
"We acknowledge and are grateful for the valuable contributions Dr. Karikó has made to science and to Penn throughout her time with the University," a University spokesperson wrote in a statement to the DP.
In 1989, four years after she arrived in the United States, Karikó was appointed an adjunct professor at the Medical School. She worked on mRNA research under cardiologist Elliot Barnathan until his departure in 1997.
From the very beginning of her time at Penn, Karikó's research was overlooked by medical school executives, she wrote in her recently published memoir, "Breaking Through: My Life in Science." These executives included Jim Wilson, the director of Penn’s embattled Gene Therapy Program, and Judith Swain, chief of cardiovascular medicine. Wilson remains a member of Penn's faculty.
Wilson did not respond to a request for comment.
“[Jim] Wilson never seemed interested in mRNA or my research," Karikó wrote. "He barely glanced my way; on the rare occasions he did, it always felt as if he were looking right through me."
After Karikó unsuccessfully appealed to Wilson for her research to be included in an upcoming grant, Swain requested that Karikó not attend similar meetings in the future — and asked Karikó to stop speaking to her Hungarian colleague in their native language.
"She told me 'people' were complaining about me, saying that I was too difficult," Karikó wrote of a time she was called to Swain's office.
During these early years, Karikó wrote that Penn prevented her from having access to basic lab supplies, such as deionized water. All of her grant applications for future research, directed at private and government agencies and the University Research Foundation, were also denied.
Five years into her tenure at Penn, Karikó was informed that she would not be promoted to the position of research associate professor, the typical stepping stone for researchers with her level of experience. In 1997, Barnathan, her supervisor, left the University, leaving Karikó without a clear path forward.
"[ I had] no grants, no funding, [and] no respect from anyone with any formal power,” she wrote.
(Photo courtesy of Hamna Shahnawaz).
After Barnathan left, Karikó was helped by a colleague, David Langer — now the chair of neurosurgery at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital. Langer convinced the chair of Penn's neurosurgery department to hire Karikó as the department's senior head of research.
“If she wasn’t hired, there may not have been a COVID vaccine," Langer said.
Even at that early point in her career, Langer said he was confident that Karikó would make substantial strides in the field of mRNA.
“She is incredibly hardworking, just insane,” Langer said. "And she’s a genius, so eventually she was going to solve this problem, whether with me or with someone else.”
Not long after, Karikó met Drew Weissman, her future research partner and co-Nobel Prize laureate, during a chance encounter at a copy machine. Karikó and Weissman began to cooperate on research into mRNA technology.
2001 College graduate David Scales — now an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine — worked in Karikó and Weissman’s lab as an undergraduate student at Penn. Scales said that he was surprised by the funding challenges faced by Karikó and other talented scientists.
“It was weird to me to see this idea that they’re only going to fund you for a short amount of time, and if you’re not able to get external grants, then they’re going to wash their hands with you and say good luck," he said.
In 1999, Sean Grady — now the chair of the neurosurgery department — arrived at Penn and immediately sought to revisit the department's existing allocation of resources.
“Not long after arriving, Sean sat me down,” Karikó wrote. “He observed that I’d had some publications in reputable, if small, journals. But, he said, he was under tremendous budgetary pressure and was concerned about my lack of funding.”
Over the following years, Grady repeatedly critiqued Karikó — paying minimal attention to her research in favor of the metrics used by Penn to evaluate her success, such as publication records, citations, and funding.
“Unless something changes, this isn’t going to go well," Grady told Karikó, according to her memoir.
Grady and others within Penn Medicine aimed to maximize the returns on their investments in individual researchers, Langer said.
To Grady, $35,000 spent on Karikó was "$35,000 that could be spent supporting a new scientist who may make a discovery," Langer added.
In 2005, Karikó and Weissman jointly made the discovery that would later win them the Nobel Prize, receiving minimal recognition from the academic community at the time.
(Photo courtesy of Robert Sobol).
Robert Sobol, a professor who worked with Karikó at Temple University before she moved to Penn, said that the development was "groundbreaking" in retrospect.
“Karikó and I started investigating RNA in the late 1990s, and we figured out what made it so inflammatory and how to get rid of the inflammation. We published that research in 2005,” Weissman previously told the DP. “That is when people, at least academics, started to get interested in its potential, and companies started to get interested in it around 2010.”
Karikó told the DP in 2020, as the first COVID-19 vaccines became available to Penn Med's frontline health workers and researchers, that she knew the the discovery in 2005 would lead to major developments in the future.
“When I discovered the potential of the RNA, I had a feeling that it could be anything,” Karikó told the DP. “But nobody believed, so I couldn’t release that feeling.”
Her former colleague Norbert Pardi, who is now an assistant professor in Penn’s Department of Microbiology, said that Karikó and Weissman's work ethic motivated the entire lab to work harder.
Penn was eventually awarded a patent for the modified RNA developed by Karikó and Weissman, enabling the University to have the final say in how the patent would be licensed. To control the direction of future research, Karikó and Weissman sought to purchase the patent themselves — but it was sold in its entirety to a different company.
Karikó requested to be reinstated to a faculty position at Penn in 2010 but was initially rejected. Karikó wrote that administrators told her that she was "not of faculty quality" — citing how individuals who have previously been demoted can not be promoted back to the faculty track.
After Karikó appealed the decision and rejoined the faculty, colleagues said that Grady continued to undermine Karikó. But it was the removal of her lab space that pushed Karikó to leave Penn, according to an employee close to Karikó who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from the University.
“She was kicked out of her lab so many times, but she made something good out of all of these failures," Éva Remenyik, a Hungarian dermatologist close to Karikó, said.
In 2013, Karikó said she returned to her lab after spending time away to find all of her belongings having been packed, moved, and misplaced at Grady's direction. Karikó then left Penn's campus to work at BioNTech, a German company that focuses on mRNA-based technologies later that year.
Langer told the DP that many of Karikó’s superiors may not have recognized the impacts of her research and potential successes.
“People didn't necessarily see her as who she was going to become,” Langer said. “Michael Jordan was overlooked by two teams and is the greatest basketball player of all time, [and] Tom Brady was drafted 199th. The value and the ultimate success of somebody is not always readily apparent, even when it’s right in front of your eyes.”
Scales also said that Penn's approach of giving minimal funds to Karikó followed a similar model to most peer institutions. He said many research institutions provide some degree of startup funds, and the expectation is for researchers to acquire external grants otherwise.
All of those interviewed commended Karikó for winning the Nobel Prize alongside Weissman.
“I think it’s a testament to her fortitude,” Sobol said. “Now that you look back on the calendar, you see that she was 20 years ahead of where everyone is now.”
Scales said he hopes that Karikó's win will prompt changes to funding allocations in research.
“I do hope that it causes Penn and a bunch of other institutions that fund science this way to reflect a little bit on what the chances are that some scientists who do not get funding, and wind up leaving, end up being like Katalin Karikó,” Scales said.
Hic sunt dracones
- John Thomas8
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Random women who deserve to be noticed
The History Guy put together some good stories: