Science

Tu Youyou

Found the malaria cure in a 4th-century Chinese text; tested it on herself before the patients.

Born: 1930 · Ningbo, China
Roots: Chinese
Family: Middle class; A literate Ningbo household; the fifth child and only daughter.
Education: Beijing Medical College (pharmacology)
Started with: Two years of tuberculosis; The illness that interrupted school at 16 turned her toward medicine.
Affiliations & societies: None documented.; Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1969 · age 39
Project 523
Named head of a research group in China's secret wartime malaria program; screens more than 2,000 traditional remedies.
1971 · age 41
The Ge Hong clue
A 4th-century handbook prescribes sweet wormwood steeped cold; switching to low-temperature extraction yields sample 191 — fully effective in mice.
1972 · age 42
Tests it on herself
She and two colleagues take the extract before patient trials begin.
1977 · age 47
Published anonymously
The artemisinin work appears without author names, per the era's rules.
2015 · age 84
Nobel Prize in Medicine
A "three withouts" scientist — no doctorate, no study abroad, no academician title. Artemisinin therapies are credited with millions of lives saved.

Sources

Compiled from these references and contemporaneous press reporting. Figures are approximate; verify before relying on them.