Gertrude Elion
Gertrude Belle Elion was born in New York City in 1921. The stock market crash in 1929 placed the family in financial straits but the brilliant young Gertruce Elion was able to enroll at Hunter College in the women's program at the age of 15. She graduated with a degree in chemistry at the age of 19 and quickly learned that that no one wanted to hire a woman with a science degree. She worked at several jobs--as a receptionist, substitute teacher and sales--while pursuing her master's degree. In 1944 she began work with Burroughs and was able to develop her research on nucleotides--over a decade before James Watson and Francis Crick determined the structure of DNA. Throughout her long career, Elion developed cures for childhood leukemia, gout and herpes. She was the first scientist to discover the immunosuppressant that made kidney transplants possible. Elion's work also involved estbalishing the ground for AZT, the drug that was to be used against AIDS. Her accomplishments earned her the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988.
Gertrude Elion died in 1999.
Isis Egyptian Goddess of Healing
References
Mothers and Daughters of Invention by Autumn Stanley (Rutgers University Press, 1995) pp.135-6,141,532.Patently Female by Ethlie Ann Vare and Greg Ptacek (John Wiley, 2002) pp. 91-93.
Gertrude Elion:Master Chemist by Stephanie St. Pierre (Rourke Book Company, 1993)
Web Sites
Gertrude Elion:A LifelineAutobiography
Gertrude Elion
Gertrude Elion: Nobel Laureate
Gertrude Elion: Nobel Prize Interview
