PARA PAR@ ` ≡TEXT ` ΓElion, Gertrude Belle1918╨ biochemist and pharmacologistBorn on January 23, 1918, in New York City, Gertrude Belle Elion, daughter of Russian ÄmigrÄ, Bertha Cohen, and Lithuanian ÄmigrÄ, Robert Elion, attended public high school in the Bronx. After her father went bankrupt during the crash of 1929, Elion enrolled tuition-free at Hunter College in 1933, where she majored in chemistry. She graduated with the highest honors from Hunter in 1937, but was unable to obtain a graduate assistantship at any of the fifteen schools to which she applied, as they were not accepting women as graduate students. Elion moved from one job to another, working first as assistant organic chemist at the Denver Chemical Company for a year, teaching chemistry and physics in New York City high schools for a year, and working as a research chemist at Johnson & Johnson for a year. During this time she also took classes part-time and received her M.S. degree from New York University in 1941. When she discovered that to obtain a Ph.D., she would have to quit working and attend school full-time, Elion left the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and never acquired her doctorate. In later years, however, Elion would receive honorary doctorate degrees from many schools, including George Washington University, Hunter College, Duke University, Columbia University, and the University of Michigan.During World War II, jobs opened up for women in fields that were previously reserved for men. In 1944, Elion accepted a position as a senior research chemist at the Wellcome Research Laboratories, where she would spend twenty years. Between 1966 and 1983 she served as head of experimental therapy and taught pharmacology at Duke University and at the University of North Carolina. Elion had begun working on nucleic acids in the 1940s, initiating her life╒s work of synthesizing and perfecting drugs used to treat diseases such as cancer and leukemia. An early breakthrough was the drug 6-mercaptopurine, which would be widely used in the chemotherapy of children with leukemia. Elion and her team went on to develop drugs successfully used in cancer chemotherapy; to treat autoimmune disorders; to ensure successful organ transplants; to treat acute rheumatoid arthritis, malaria, herpes, gout, and hyperuricemia. Her immunosuppressant, Imuran, was used during the first heart transplant. Later Elion╒s work was recognized as leading the way for the development of azidothymidine (AZT), currently one of the most effective treatments for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).During the 1980s, Elion served on various committees for the World Health Organization╒s Division of Tropical Disease Research and as the chairperson of WHO╒s Steering Committee on the Chemotherapy of Malaria. Elion╒s many awards included the Garvan Medal, 1968, the President╒s Medal from Hunter College, 1970, and the National Medal of Science, 1991. In 1988 she and her collaborator George Hitchings won the Nobel prize for medicine or physiology. ■styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ ? !I f 5¬ g !I r 5¬ s !I ÷ 5¬ ≈ !I
