For the brilliant Britons who wrote their names into the history books yesterday, the evening of Sunday, November 22 will be forever etched in their memory.
Burnt out after toiling around the clock with microscopes and pipettes for 11 months, the scientists and doctors – most of them women – were enjoying some rare downtime in homes dotted around Oxfordshire when they received the call they had prayed for, confirming the vaccine was effective.
Professor Sarah Gilbert, the 58-year-old mother of triplets who designed it, recalls how she was quietly reading a book when the phone rang with the joyous news.
Biologist Catherine Green, who created the cell culture from which the first doses were made, admits to being so overcome with emotion that she ‘had a good cry’. The next morning she awoke to find a magnum of ‘English fizz’ on her porch.