The coronavirus pandemic forced Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier to accept the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry virtually, instead of at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The landmark research that brought Doudna and Charpentier - one American, the other French — has the potential to control future pandemics — either by outwitting the next viral plague through better screening and treatment or by engineering human beings with better disease resistance programmed into their cells. Isaacson does an amazing job of sharing their journeys, explaining gene editing and describing the competition that accelerated the research and the related nasty patent disputes.