​"Don't let others discourage you or tell you that you can't do it."

Photo by [1] [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0)] via Wikimedia Commons

• CHEMIST
  
• Helped invent the FIRST drugs effective against cancer
• Daughter of immigrants
• Graduated from high school at age 15
• Inspired to study chemistry and become a cancer researcher after her grandfather died of stomach cancer
• After graduating from college, she was rejected universally by laboratories because she was a woman -- one interviewer said she was "too pretty" to be hired because she would "distract the other scientists"
• Worked as a secretary and then as a public school teacher while earning her master's degree
• ONLY woman in her graduating class at New York University
• Finally hired in 1944 by Burroughs Wellcome, which already employed women researchers
• Created the drug Purinethol which by itself extended the lives of children battling leukemia; discovered that when combined with other drugs, Purinethol cured 80% of childhood leukemia cases
• FIRST woman to lead a major research group when she became the head of the Department of Experimental Therapy in 1967
• Has 45 patents
• Won the NOBEL PRIZE with her longtime research partner George Hitchings
• Never earned her doctorate because she didn't want to stop working at Burroughs Wellcome, but was given an honorary doctorate from George Washington University, among others
• The American Association of Cancer Research gives the Gertrude B. Elion Cancer Research Award in her honor

Bibliography: Braun, Sandra. Incredible Women Inventors. Toronto: Second Story Press, 2006. Print.
Ignotofsky, Rachel. Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World. New York: Ten Speed Press, 2016. Print.
Korshak, Yvonne and Robert J. Ruben. “Gertrude Belle Elion.” Extraordinary Women in Science & Medicine: Four Centuries of Achievement, The Grolier Club, 2013, 167-172.
Home/ Funding/ AACR Gertrude B. Elion Cancer Research Award. https://www.aacr.org/Funding/Pages/aacr-gertrude-b-elion-cancer-research-award___2FEB93.aspx

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