Gertrude B. Elion

Gertrude Belle Elion was born January 23, 1918, and trained as a biochemist and pharmacologist at a time when labs rarely opened their doors to women. Working alongside George H. Hitchings, she pioneered rational drug design: studying the biochemistry of disease to build molecules that would disrupt it precisely. The approach yielded azathioprine, the first immunosuppressive drug that made organ transplants viable, and acyclovir, the first successful antiviral against herpes. Later her methods produced AZT, the first widely used treatment for AIDS. In 1988 she shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hitchings and Sir James Black. She died February 21, 1999, having rewritten the rules of how medicine fights disease.