Gertrude B. Elion Perlman

Gertrude B. Elion lost her closest companion, her grandfather, at the age of fifteen. The loss of her grandfather made her become determined to cancer research. She began to study Chemistry at Hunter College and graduated with highest honors at age 19. Even with this extremely high academic record, her graduate application was turned down by fifteen graduate programs. Despite this major adversity, she was determined and took a job as an unpaid laboratory assistant.

In 1944, Gertrude B. Elion was hired by the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Welcome to do work with nucleic acids. During her 39 year career at Burroughs Welcome, Gertrude and a collaborator developed a drug, 6-mercaplopurine, that is used in chemotherapy to treat children with leukemia.

She received the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1988 for the development of drugs such as azathioprine. These and other drugs aid in organ transplant surgery by keeping the body from rejecting the new organ.

A plaque awarded to Dr. Gertrude Elion by Ohio State University may best sum up her life's work:

"The achievements of Gertrude B. Elion will continue to have a profound impact on countless lives, for her breakthroughs in  pharmacology have improved treatments for an extraordinary range of illness, from leukemia to rheumatoid arthritis, herpes virus, and kidney disease...Gertrude B. Elion is the standard in her field...who wields the tools of science to ease human suffering."

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