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Mar. 22nd, 2005 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
electriclandOooh! The Feminist of the Day is Gertrude Elion!
I have a book called Nobel Prize Women in Science, which has biographies of all the women who've won or significantly contributed to work that led to a Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, or physiology and medicine. The small number of these is truly frightening. But Gertrude Elion stands out even from this stellar bunch, as much as anything because she's about the only one who did all her work without a Ph.D. And an impressive body of work it is -- she and Hitchings took a systematic approach to medicinal chemistry and... well, read the excerpt from the press release:
I have a book called Nobel Prize Women in Science, which has biographies of all the women who've won or significantly contributed to work that led to a Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, or physiology and medicine. The small number of these is truly frightening. But Gertrude Elion stands out even from this stellar bunch, as much as anything because she's about the only one who did all her work without a Ph.D. And an impressive body of work it is -- she and Hitchings took a systematic approach to medicinal chemistry and... well, read the excerpt from the press release:
Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings, who have collaborated since 1945, demonstrated differences in nucleic acid metabolism between normal human cells, cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria and virus. On the basis of such differences a series of drugs were developed that block nucleic acid synthesis in cancer cells and noxious organisms without damaging the normal human cells. Over the years Elion's and Hitchings' research philosophy has formed the basis for development of new drugs against a variety of diseases. During 1950-51 they developed thioguanine and 6-mercaptopurine against leukemia and pyrimethamine against malaria. Azathioprine, a drug that prevents rejection of transplanted organs and allopurinol which is used in the treatment of gout were developed in 1957 and 1963, respectively. An important discovery was that the chemotherapeutic effects of pyrimethamine and trimethoprim were markedly enhanced by sulphonamides. A recent, successful application of their research ideas is exemplified by acyclovir (1977), the first effective drug in the treatment of herpes virus infections.She's very cool.
