Gertrude B. Elion

Gertrude Belle Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, born in New York City on January 23, 1918, to a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant dentist and a Polish Jewish immigrant mother. Her family lost its wealth after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, but she graduated from Walton High School at fifteen, was inspired by her grandfather death from stomach cancer to pursue science and medicine, and graduated summa cum laude from Hunter College in 1937 with a degree in chemistry. She saved money to attend New York University and built a career in drug research. She shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black for innovative methods of rational drug design, which focused on understanding the target of a drug. Her work led to the anti-retroviral drug AZT, the immunosuppressive drug azathioprine and the antiviral drug acyclovir. She was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1995 and died on February 21, 1999.