Born in New York City to immigrant parents, she graduated from Hunter College in 1937 and New York University (M.Sc.) in 1941. Unable to obtain a graduate research position, she worked as a lab assistant and a high school teacher. Later, she left to work as an assistant to George H. Hitchings at the Burroughs-Wellcome pharmaceutical company (now GlaxoSmithKline). 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.
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.
In Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation, there is a chapter devoted to her.
Gertrude Elion died in North Carolina in 1999, aged 81. She had moved to the Research Triangle in 1970, and for a time served as a research professor at Duke University. She was unmarried.
Quotes
"I had no specific bent toward science until my grandfather died of cancer. I decided nobody should suffer that much."
"The idea was to do research, find new avenues to conquer, new mountains to climb."[5]
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^Holloway, M. (1991) Profile: Gertrude Belle Elion – The Satisfaction of Delayed Gratification, Scientific American265(4), 40-44.