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 malaria. 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 Campbell and Satoshi Omura, who developed a treatment for infections caused by roundworm parasites.
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