Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci : the boffins behind the Covid-19 vaccine

Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci are an unassuming Turkish-German couple who had already made their fortune as biotech entrepreneurs when a strange new virus emerged in Wuhan. They saw it as their duty to leap into action.

Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci are rapidly becoming “the most celebrated marriage in science since Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radioactivity”, says The Times. The Turkish-German couple behind BioNTech, which developed the break-through Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer, are just as cosy as their eminent predecessors. They ride everywhere on bikes and spent their honeymoon in white lab coats. When Pfizer’s boss Albert Bourla telephoned to deliver the good news that the vaccine was 90% effective, they celebrated with a cup of tea.

Operation Light Speed

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.