In January 2020, just weeks after the first known case and months before it took grip globally, immunologist Uğur Şahin told Özlem Türeci, his wife and decades-long research partner, that a vaccine against what would soon be known as COVID-19 could be developed before the end of the year. Initially facing widespread scepticism in the scientific community, by November their firm BioNTech, in partnership with Pfizer, became the first to develop and test a working vaccine; as of 2021 over ...