OK, you tell me, what is cooler than being a scientist who not only wins the Nobel Prize for their country but also, also is the first and only person of their gender to do so? And, also, just to add on to that, the thing that you did for the Nobel Prize was something that helped cure malaria, an illness that honestly devastated the world, revolutionizing medicine? There can be nothing cooler than that, right?
Well, I wouldn’t know, but Tu Youyou certainly does.
Tu Youyou is one hundred percent a Women Who Rocked the World. Especially since I am the creator of this series, and I am Chinese and consider Tu Youyou a national treasure.
Tu Youyou was born in Ningbo, China, and is the perfect example of both a) why you should always send your daughters to school, and b) why you should always have your eyes open for opportunities and potential sources of inspiration in your everyday lives, because who knows, you might be the next Tu Youyou. Tu Youyou had parents who insisted that she went to school, and though she took a two year break during her high school career due to tuberculosis (gosh darn that stupid tuberculosis), she actually found inspiration in this experience, and decided right there and then to study medicine to help those who contracted diseases like her.
Perhaps what is most unique about Tu Youyou’s experiences as a doctor is the fact that she often drew upon ancient Chinese medicine in her research (This is what I use to tell people off when they tell me that ancient Chinese medicine is a joke. Oh yeah? You wanna tell that to Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou?). She was raised and educated in China, in the Chinese education system, and interestingly enough, doesn’t have a PhD, a medical degree, or even time studying abroad. Indeed, her success was based almost entirely on her own studies into the ancient Chinese medicine. (It’s not that Tu Youyou didn’t want a PhD, I think I should clarify. It was that in China at the time, the colleges and universities didn’t offer PhDs at the time.)
Then, when she was thirty nine years old, Tu Youyou was appointed head of the Project 523, which was a project in China that was started by Mao Zedong to find a cure for malaria, which had been plaguing the Chinese masses. It was ten years before she was able to find the cure, and another two decades before international organizations recognized Tu Youyou’s work. Yet, against all odds, including the disbelief of many of the masses who at the time believed that Western medicine was superior to Chinese medicine, Tu Youyou succeeded. She discovered, or rather, she uncovered artemisinin, currently one of the most available drugs for malaria treatment, and perhaps one of the most important pharmaceutical intervention in the last half-century.
Tu Youyou once said: “Artemisinin… is a true gift from old Chinese medicine. But this is not the only instance in which the wisdom of Chinese medicine has borne fruit.” She has always advocated for the benefits of Chinese medicine, and more than that, she has made Chinese medicine more noted and respectable in the international medicine community. She is a pioneer of medicine, a ground-breaking scientist, overall just one of the coolest scientists around today, and truly a woman who rocked the world.
Bibliography
*, Name. “Youyou Tu - an Exceptional Nobel Laureate.” Science in the News, November 18, 2020. https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/youyou-tu-an-exceptional-nobel-laureate/.
Hatton, Celia. “Nobel Prize Winner Tu Youyou Helped by Ancient Chinese Remedy.” BBC News. BBC, October 6, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-34451386.
“The Nobel Prize: Women Who Changed Science: Tu Youyou.” The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org. Accessed February 28, 2022. https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/tu-youyou.
Team, In School. “Know the Scientist: Tu Youyou.” Return to frontpage. The Hindu, April 8, 2021. https://www.thehindu.com/children/know-the-scientisttu-youyou/article34269625.ece.
Woodrow, Charles J., and Nicholas J. White. “The Clinical Impact of Artemisinin Resistance in Southeast Asia and the Potential for Future Spread.” FEMS Microbiology Reviews 41, no. 1 (2016): 34–48. https://doi.org/10.1093/femsre/fuw037.
Comments