George H. Hitchings

George Herbert Hitchings (18 April 1905 to 27 February 1998) was an American biochemist who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir James Black and Gertrude Elion for discoveries of important principles for drug treatment, his own share resting on his work on chemotherapy. Born in Hoquiam, Washington, he studied chemistry at the University of Washington, graduating in 1927 and taking a master's degree the next year, then went to Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1933. After posts at Harvard and Case Western Reserve University he joined Wellcome Research Laboratories at Tuckahoe in 1942 and began working with Gertrude Elion in 1944. Their line of inquiry produced drugs for malaria, leukemia, gout, organ transplantation and bacterial infections, and pointed the way to antiviral drugs. He became vice president in charge of research at Burroughs Wellcome in 1967 and Scientist Emeritus in 1976, and also taught at Duke University.