Tu Youyou
Chinese medical scientist · China · Scientists · Born 1930 · age 95
Tu Youyou is read about 771 times a day, in 85 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?She pulled an anti-malarial compound from ancient Chinese texts, ran it through hundreds of experiments, and landed on artemisinin - a drug that has since saved millions of lives across four continents. The first Chinese woman to win a Nobel in science did it all without leaving the country.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
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D810 4987 Tu Youyou, medicine (22945001843) (cropped).jpg?width=1200)
810 5094 Satoshi Ōmura, William C. Campbell & Tu Youyou, medicine (22944093364)_(cropped_2).jpg?width=1200)
D810 4987 Tu Youyou, medicine (22945001843) (cropped 2).jpg?width=1200)
D810 4987 Tu Youyou, medicine (22945001843).jpg?width=1200)
D810 4997 Satoshi Ōmura, William C. Campbell & Tu Youyou, medicine (22943866454).jpg?width=1200)
D810 5096-1 William C. Campbell & Tu Youyou, medicine (23572674555).jpg?width=1200)
D810 5097 William C. Campbell & Tu Youyou, medicine (23204709839)
HKCEC WCN Wan Chai North 展覽 Exhibition 時代精神耀香江 Modern Chinese Scientists 中國科學家 photo exhibition 中華人民共和國 PRChina July 2021 SS2 45In their own words 2
, (translation) This is not my personal honor, but the honor of all Chinese scientists.
(translation) During the discovery of artemisinin, ancient texts inspired me at the most crucial moment of the research.
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Tu Youyou was born on 30 December 1930 and trained as a pharmaceutical chemist and malariologist entirely within China. Working through classical Chinese medical literature, she isolated artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, compounds that became a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine and transformed malaria treatment across South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. In 2011 she received the Lasker Award in clinical medicine, the first Chinese person to do so. Four years later she shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura - the first Chinese Nobel laureate in that field and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to win a Nobel in any category. In September 2019 she was awarded the Medal of the Republic, the highest honor the Chinese state can bestow.
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