Thank heavens for people like Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci. Husband and wife, they’re cofounders of BioNTech SE, the German company that — with its American partner Pfizer Inc. — appears closest to rolling out a working vaccine against COVID-19. He’s the chief executive officer, she’s the chief medical officer.
The story of their quest to use a novel scientific method to defeat that disease, as well as cancer and others, would suffice to make them heroes of our time. But it should also offer inspiration and cause reflection in another way: They’re both from immigrant families.
Now in their fifties, both are children of Turks who came to West Germany during its long postwar economic boom, when the country invited so-called "guest workers” to help fill gaping labor shortages. Sahin was four years old when he moved with his mother from Turkey to Cologne to join his father, who was employed in a car factory there. Tureci was born in Germany to a Turkish father who was working as a doctor in a small Catholic hospital.