Gertrude Belle Elion

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Gertrude Belle Elion

Gertrude Belle Elion (born January 23, 1918 in New York , † February 21, 1999 in Chapel Hill , North Carolina ) was an American biochemist , pharmacologist and Nobel Prize winner . She discovered important principles of drug therapy.

Live and act

Gertrude Elion was born as the daughter of the dentist Robert Elion and his wife Bertha, b. Cohen, born. Her parents emigrated from Poland and Lithuania when they were children. When she was fifteen, in 1933, her grandfather died of cancer, after which she decided to study chemistry to research a cure for cancer. She completed her bachelor's degree at Hunter College in 1937 (the only woman at New York University until 1939) and in 1939, after she failed to find a job as a chemist, started a master's degree at New York University , which she successfully completed in 1941. She then worked as an unpaid laboratory assistant, high school teacher for chemistry and physics and, after the USA entered the war, as an analytical chemist in the food industry.

In 1944 she received an offer to work as a laboratory assistant at the biochemist George H. Hitchings at the British pharmaceutical company Burroughs-Wellcome & Company (now GlaxoSmithKline ). It was here in 1948 that she and George H. Hitchings developed the active ingredient diaminopurine - a cytostatic agent, the breakthrough in her scientific work. She worked, researched and developed in this institute until she retired in 1983. Although she was initially enrolled as a doctoral student at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (now the Polytechnic University of New York ), she did not graduate because research at Burroughs-Wellcome was more important to her. However, she received an honorary doctorate from the Polytechnic University of New York in 1989 and Harvard University in 1998 . Gertrude Elion launched in 1966 the Department of Experimental Therapy of Wellcome - laboratories .

From 1983 to 1984 she was president of the American Association for Cancer Research . She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Society . She continued to work successfully as a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline. Even after her retirement, she continues her research work to combat AIDS.

Together with George H. Hitchings, she developed a large number of new pharmacological agents :

Together with George H. Hitchings and James W. Black , she received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discoveries on important biochemical principles of drug therapy.

Gertrude Belle Elion was awarded the Lemelson MIT Prize in 1997 for her life's work.

She died on February 21, 1999 while walking in a park in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

literature

  • Birgitt Sickenberger: The real reward is the healing of patients. In: Charlotte Kerner (ed.): Madame Curie and her sisters - women who received the Nobel Prize. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel 1997, ISBN 3-407-80845-3 .

Web links

Commons : Gertrude Elion  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gisela Baumgar: Elion, Gertrude Belle. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 343.
  2. ↑ Read "Biographical Memoirs V.78" at NAP.edu. In: nap.edu. February 19, 2016, accessed September 16, 2016 .
  3. ^ Jewish Women's Archive: Bertha and Gertrude Elion
  4. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Gertrude B. Elion in academictree.org, accessed on 4 February 2018th
  5. ↑ Staff: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1988: Sir James W. Black, Gertrude B. Elion, George H. Hitchings . Nobelprize.org. 1988. Retrieved October 20, 2012.
  6. ^ Entry on Elion, Gertrude Belle (1918-1999) in the archives of the Royal Society , London
personal data
SURNAME Elion, Gertrude Belle
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist, pharmacologist, and Nobel Prize winner in medicine
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , USA
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1999
Place of death Chapel Hill , North Carolina , USA