RNA vaccines as an idea are a pretty recent thing. The fact that this one exists at all is literally a first. Remarkable how quickly they've gone from mRNA as an idea that they've been working on to a full-fledged vaccine for a novel coronavirus in under a year.

The idea has been around for a lot longer than that.

The discovery by Derrick Rossi that led to the formation of Moderna was hailed way back in 2010 as one of the top medical breakthroughs of the year.

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...

No doubt the pandemic helped accelerate development.

He was the first to see the promise, but it was discovered by Katalin Kariko who actually works at BioNTech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Kariko