Gertrude B. Elion

The Life of Gertrude B. Elion

In this presentation...

2. Birth and Death

1. Early Life

4. Accomplishments and Contributions to Science

3. Education and Academic Carer

6. Honors and Legacy

5. Jobs

Gertrude B. Elions Early life and family

Gertrude Elion spent the first seven years in her life living in a large apartment in Manhattan where her father had his dental office. Her brother was born approximately 6 years after she was, and shortly after he was born they mixed to the Bronx. Her and her brother had a great childhood. Then when she was 15, her grandfather died of cancer. That was her motivation to do something that could make this disease come to an end. In the biogrophy she wrote for the nobelprize.org, she says, “I remember my school days as being very challenging and full of good comradery among the students.”

Birth and Death

Born: 23 January 1918, New York, NY, USA - President Woodrow Wilson outlines an elaborate peace plan to the U.S. Congress containing Fourteen Points as the basis of its establishment. Also World War | had been going on since July 28, 1914.

Died: 21 February 1999, Chapel Hill, NC, USA - U.S. Expands Air Strikes on Iraq

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Education and Academic Career

When she was younger went to a great public school with good basic education. For Highschool she went to Walton High School + Jamaica High School. At the age of 15, Gertrude she started going to Hunter College in New York and studied Chemistry. Then she graduated at 19 in chemistry. She struggled to find a job since laboratories weren’t interested in women chemist. She found part-time jobs as a lab assistant and went back to school at New York University. She worked as a substitute teacher while finishing up her masters degree in which she received in 1941.

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Accomplishments and Contribution to Science

Figured out a new way to approach medical chemistry, which back then was trial-and-error. In the article from the nobelprize.org it says this about Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings, “Starting from the understanding that all cells require nucleic acid to reproduce, they reasoned that rapidly growing bacteria and tumours require even more to sustain the pace of growth. Find a way to disrupt their lifecycle, and you find a way to stop disease.”

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Jobs

Gertrude Elion had numerous jobs such as:

• Wellcome Research Laboratories (now known as GlaxoSmithKline) Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
• During the 1950s, Elion and Hitchings, developed a systematic method for producing drugs based on knowledge of biochemistry and diseases.
• During World War II a lack of chemists arose because since many men had joined the war, which led Elion to finding work at a laboratory

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Honors and Legacy

• In 1988, she shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with her old colleague George Hitchings and fellow researcher Sir James Black.
• she was one of only ten women to have won a Nobel Prize in the sciences (and one of the very few to earn one without a doctorate)
• Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine 1988 - “for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment”
• National Medal of Science by President George H.W. Bush

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Refrences

https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/gertrude-elion#:~:text=Born%20in%201918%2C%20Gertrude%20Elion,Jewish%20parents%2C%20and%20her%20grandfather.&text=She%20was%20particularly%20close%20to,painful%20death%20from%20stomach%20cancer.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1988/elion/biographical/