Just sometimes, everyone else is wrong. They insist that your idea won’t work, your finding is wrong, your scheme is mad. For many Nobel Prize laureates, that was the starting point. But, ignoring other peoples’ preconceptions about what is possible, they went ahead anyway. And, eventually, the results made history. Treading a solo path can, however, be a lonely business, and you need confidence, strength and resilience to persevere. In this conversation we will bring together two Nobel Prize laureates to explore the dangers of always trusting received wisdom and the strategies that can help you survive and flourish if you decide to go your own way.

The evening will feature George Smoot (2006 Nobel Prize laureate in physics), who detected the seeds of the first galaxies in the echoes of the big bang, and, joining us online, Katalin Karikó, (2023 Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine), who pioneered the development of mRNA vaccines, so essential in combating the Covid-19 pandemic. This will be followed by a panel discussion with Mara Dierssen, a world expert in the field of Down syndrome research who heads the Cellular and Systems Neurobiology group of the Systems and Synthetic Biology program at the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona. Moderating the conversation will be Adam Smith, host of the Nobel Prize Conversations podcast from nobelprize.org, which this season investigates the lives and works of the 2023 Nobel Prize laureates.

The event will be held in English, but English-Spanish simultaneous interpretation will be provided.