Gertrude Elion was a biochemist who was integral to the inventions of several major drugs. She, along with G. Hitchings and Sir J. Black, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for these creations. In fact, you probably know someone in your life that has benefited from her works.
Gertrude Elion was born January 23, 1918 and was a child of immigrants. She enjoyed school and “loved both of [her] courses equally.” However, she decided to focus on chemistry due to death of her grandfather, who had passed due to cancer. So, she graduated from Hunter College with a degree in Biochemistry. After, she worked several jobs, including lab assistant, assistant chemist and teacher in New York City. All this work never distracted her form her true goal, helping others.
In 1944, she became a colleague of Hitchings at the Burroughs Wellcome Laboratories. She worked at this laboratory for forty years. It is here
that she did the work that got a Nobel Prize. She helped make several drugs that were good at treating malaria, leukemia and many other diseases. Basically, she helped a lot of people through her work.
Later in life, she became head of the Department of Experimental Therapy and created a new AIDS drug, azisothymidine. She retired in 1983 and was given a PHD from two universities.
In conclusion, her work as a chemist sparked the inventions of many life saving drugs that we still use today. Instead of the old, and brute method of trial and error, her method relied on understanding. The things that she made and how she made them are still used today. She made the world a better place through her research.
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