Tu Youyou

Chinese medical scientist

  • Fame66.1
  • Momentum3.0
  • China rank#97
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Source-basedFalling
  • Fame66.1
  • Momentum3.0
  • China rank#97
  • Scientists rank#143
  • Wikipedia39K
Born 1930 · age 96China

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  • Wikipedia
    85 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Rank in China
    #97
    Scientists
  • Age
    96
    Born 1930
  • Awards
    7
    recognised works
Summary
Updated 2026-06-21

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.

Biography

About

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 Satos…

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Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
66.1
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum3.0
Historical25.4
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
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Sources

  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence