08/19/2026
Gertrude Belle Elion
Early life and education
Elion was born in New York City in 1918 to parents Robert Elion, a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant and a dentist, and Bertha Cohen, a Polish Jewish immigrant.
Elion was an excellent student who graduated High School at age 15. When she was 15, her grandfather died of stomach cancer, and being with him during his last moments inspired Elion to pursue a career in science and medicine in college.
Phi Beta Kappa at Hunter College, on full scholarship, she graduated summa cm laude in 1937.
Unable to find a paying research job after graduating because she was a woman, Elion worked as a secretary and high school teacher before working in an unpaid position at a chemistry lab. Eventually, she saved up enough money to attend New York University, and she earned her M.Sc. in 1941, while working as a high school teacher during the day.
In an interview after receiving her Nobel Prize, she stated that she believed the sole reason she was able to further her education as a young woman was because she was able to attend Hunter College for free. Her fifteen financial aid applications for graduate school were turned down due to gender bias.
Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist who pioneered rational drug design and shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Overcoming gender bias and financial hardship, she developed groundbreaking drugs including 6-mercaptopurine for leukemia, azathioprine for organ transplants, allopurinol for gout, and acyclovir for herpes. Her work also contributed to AZT for AIDS and transformed pharmaceutical research.
