Albert Bourla

Albert Bourla grew up in what remained of the Sephardic community of Thessaloniki, some 96% of which was murdered in the Holocaust; both his parents survived, and he has given their testimony to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. Trained as a veterinarian with a doctorate in reproductive biotechnology, he joined Pfizer in 1993 and became chief executive in 2019. In 2020 he committed the company to the untested mRNA platform with BioNTech, declined US government development money so as to keep the timetable under the company's own control, and brought the vaccine from design to authorisation in about nine months. He received the 2022 Genesis Prize and directed its million dollars to Holocaust education and to the Holocaust Museum of Greece.