There’s no getting away from it, in both time and space, viewed in the context of the broad sweep of history from anywhere on the planet, the best thing that can be said about 2021 is that it wasn’t 2020. Not much of a recommendation, then. Even so, and perhaps more so because of the ongoing global crisis, some individuals stand out for having made our lives better, happier and, in the case of the two inventors of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, longer. While Dr Ugur Sahin and Dr Ozlem Tureci, the husband and wife team behind BioNTech are heroes obviously and inextricably linked to the pandemic, as is Dr Waheed Arian, our writers’ choices are mercifully not dominated by the battle against Covid-19.

Source: The Times December 25, 2021 18:36 UTC