Tu Youyou
Tu Youyou,
1930–, Chinese pharmaceutical chemist, B.S. Peking Univ. School of Medicine, 1955. Tu has spent her entire career as a researcher at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing. In 2015 she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discoveries concerning the treatment of malariamalaria,infectious parasitic disease that can be either acute or chronic and is frequently recurrent. Malaria is common in Africa, Central and South America, the Mediterranean countries, Asia, and many of the Pacific islands.
..... Click the link for more information. . Working on a secret military project initiated by the Chinese Communist party in the late 1960s, Tu and her team discovered artemisinin, a drug derived from the sweet wormwood plant that is now part of the standard antimalarial treatment. The other half of the prize was shared by William CampbellCampbell, William Cecil,
1930–, Irish-American biologist and parasitologist, b. Derry, Northern Ireland, Ph.D. Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison, 1957. He became a U.S. citizen in 1962.
..... Click the link for more information. and Satoshi OmuraOmura, Satoshi,
1935–, Japanese biochemist, grad .Univ. of Tokyo (Ph.D. 1968), Tokyo Univ. of Science (Ph.D. 1970). He has been a researcher and leader at the Kitasato Institute since 1965.
..... Click the link for more information. , who developed a treatment for infections caused by roundworm parasites.