GERTRUDE ELION — Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine 1988
Discovering medicines that hold the miracle of life and being able to make a gift of them to the sick and injured counts among technology's greatest blessings. For her discoveries of important principles for drug treatment in the fields of biochemistry, chemotherapy, enzymology, hematology, immunology, pharmacology, transplantation and virology, Gertrude Elion was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with her colleague and mentor, George H. Hitchings. Gertrude Elion explained the fulfillment she derived from her work developing treatments for cancer, leukemia, malaria, AIDS and other critical illnesses in her Nobel autobiography, "When we began to see the results of our efforts in the form of new drugs which filled real medical needs and benefited patients in very visible ways, our feeling of reward was immeasurable."