Tu Youyou, (born December 30, 1930, Ningbo, Zhejiang province, China), Chinese scientist and phytochemist known for her isolation and study of the antimalarial substance qinghaosu, later known as artemisinin, one of the world’s most effective malaria-fighting drugs. For her discoveries, Tu received the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (shared with Irish-born American parasitologist William Campbell and Japanese microbiologist Omura Satoshi).
Tu studied at the department of pharmaceutics of Beijing Medical College. After earning a degree there in 1955, she was chosen to join the Institute of Materia Medica at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (later the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences). From 1959 to 1962, she participated in a full-time training course in the use of traditional Chinese medicine that was geared toward researchers with knowledge of Western medicine. The course provided a foundation for her later application of traditional Chinese medical knowledge to modern drug discovery.
She was promoted to a Researcher in 1980 shortly after the Chinese economic reform began in 1978. In 2001 she was promoted to academic advisor for doctoral candidates. Currently she is the Chief Scientist in the Academy.
As of 2007, her office is in an old apartment building in Dongcheng District, Beijing.
Before 2011, Tu Youyou had been obscure for decades, and is described as “almost completely forgotten by people”.
Tu is regarded as the “Three-Without Scientist” – no postgraduate degree (there was no postgraduate education then in China), no study or research experience abroad, and not a member of either of the Chinese national academies, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering. Tu is now regarded as a representative figure of the first generation of Chinese medical workers since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Credit : Britannica
Picture Credit : Google
