Photo credit: Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden — Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0
Tu Youyou
born 1930 · China · 20th century
Nobel Medicine 2015
Discovered artemisinin, an antimalarial drug from sweet wormwood, and won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Nobel Prize work
For discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria. During the secret Project 523, Tu Youyou reviewed ancient Chinese medical texts, noted Ge Hong's instruction to steep qinghao (Artemisia annua) without heat, and devised a low-temperature ether extraction that yielded artemisinin (1971–72) — a sesquiterpene lactone with a peroxide bridge highly active against Plasmodium. She also led work on derivatives such as dihydroartemisinin, the basis of the artemisinin combination therapies that have saved millions of lives.