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Gertrude Belle Elion (January 23, 1918 – February 21, 1999)[1] was an Sir James Black. Working alone as well as with Hitchings and Black, Elion developed a multitude of new drugs, using innovative research methods that would later lead to the development of the AIDS drug AZT.[2][3][4]
Elion was born in
Elion never married, had no children, and listed her hobbies as photography, travel and listening to music.[18] Gertrude Elion died in North Carolina in 1999, aged 81.
In 1988 Elion received the Nobel Prize in Medicine, together with Hitchings and Sir James Black. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990,[13] a member of the Institute of Medicine in 1991[14] and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences also in 1991.[15] Other awards include the National Medal of Science (1991),[16] Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award (1997), and the Garvan-Olin Medal (1968). In 1991 she became the first woman to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.[17] She was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1995.[1]
During 1967 she occupied the position of the head of the company’s Department of Experimental Therapy and officially retired in 1983. Despite her retirement, Elion continued working almost full-time at the lab, and oversaw the adaptation of azidothymidine (AZT), which became the first drug used for treatment of AIDS.
Rather than relying on trial-and-error, Elion and Hitchings used the differences in biochemistry between normal human cells and pathogens (disease-causing agents) to design drugs that could kill or inhibit the reproduction of particular pathogens without harming the host cells. Most of Elion's early work came from the use and development of purines. Elion's inventions include:
Elion had moved to the Burroughs Wellcome.
She began to go to school night at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, but after several years of long range commuting, she was informed that she would no longer be able to continue her doctorate on a part-time basis, but would need to give up her job and go to school full-time. Elion made what was then a critical decision in her life, to stay with her job and give up the pursuit of a doctorate.[6] She never obtained a formal Ph.D., but was later awarded an honorary Ph.D from Polytechnic University of New York in 1989 and honorary SD degree from Harvard university in 1998.
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