Raquel Diaz-Sprague
Executive Director, AWISCO

     When I first wrote a letter to Dr. Gertrude B. Elion in July of 1998 inviting her to come to speak at a poster session presented by the Association for Women in Science of CentralOhio, I did not expect much. I thought that, as a Nobel Laureate, she would have many invitations to choose from. At her age, I wondered if she did only a limited amount of travel. I guessed that our chances of getting her to come to Columbus, Ohio were not great.

      Two weeks passed and I heard nothing. I went away to a five-day conference at Mount Holyoke College and when I came back, I had a voice mail from Dr. Elion saying she would be glad to come and speak to us. I called her back, immediately. She apologized for not getting back to me sooner because she had been out of the country. I was awed by her - she was so totally unassuming. Whenever we talked, she spoke thoughtfully with a clear and cheerful voice. She said she would be delighted to come and would be interested in seeing the posters by the women scientists and chat with them individually. She mentioned her affection, "a warm spot in her heart", for The Ohio State University from where she received an honorary Doctor of Science in 1989.

      At a board meeting, the members of the Association for Women in Science were thrilled. After all, we were going to meet a rare breed of a woman scientist - a Nobel Laureate. Since 1901, the year the Nobel Prize was instituted, there have been over 300 men and only 9 women receiving the prize for Science or Medicine - a mere 3%. It is legitimate to ask, why so few? Sandra Harding, who writes about women in science from a feminist perspective has concluded, "women have been more systematically excluded from doing serious science, than from performing any other social activity, except perhaps, frontline warfare."

            Life is indeed darkness
            save when there is urge,

            And all urge is blind
            save when there is knowledge,

            And all knowledge is vain
            save when there is work

            And all work is empty
            save when there is love,

      When Gertrude Elion was 15 years old, her grandfather, died of stomach cancer. His suffering and death inspired Gertrude to study chemistry and to devote every effort of her mind and spirit to find a cure for cancer. A few years later, her fiancee succumbed to bacterial endocarditis. This loss, from which she never fully recovered, reinforced her determination to seek cures for diseases through chemistry.

      Having graduated from Hunter College with the highest honors in 1937 and obtained a master's degree in chemistry from New York University in 1941, she had trouble finding a job, because she was a woman. Her perseverance in the face of discrimination is both a lesson and a legacy for which the world is grateful. After years of temporary or unpaid jobs, in 1944 she finally obtained a research position in the laboratory of Dr. George Hitchings, at Burroughs Wellcome, in Tuckahoe, N.Y.

      Hitchings was working on the problem of creating antimetabolites to DNA structural bases as a means to interfere with the cell division of cancer cells. Elion's work inHitchings laboratory was immensely satisfying and largelyself-directed. "I was allowed to advance at my own rate, and there was never any barrier to my jumping into a field in which I had no formal training" she recalls. She happily worked long hours on the purine bases - adenine and guanine. She tried hundreds of experimental variations, some of her ideas were hunches, trying to figure out what puzzled her.

      In addition, she attended graduateschool, at night, at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in New York City. However, she was not permitted to continue on apart-time basis and had to leave without obtaining a Ph.D. She regretted the lack of this degree for a number of years, but in time she came to regard it as a badge of honor. Elion is one of the few scientists without a Ph.D. ever to receivethe Nobel Prize.

      Her motivation to fight cancer never changed but it did broaden into immunosuppressants and antiviral compounds. She became head of the Department of Experimental Therapy and had a fair number of people working under her. She mentored and encouraged them and the graduate and medical students from Duke University who worked on research projects under her tutelage.

      Gertrude Elion was 32-years old when she synthesized the revolutionary drugs 6-mercaptopurine and thioguanine which were effective against leukemia. Other Elion'slifesaving compounds include, the immunosuppressant Imuranand the antiviral compound acyclovir. She regarded all the drugs she synthesized, affectionately, as "her children. "The Nobel Prize and all the honors that came with it, did not mean as much to Elion as the letters of grateful patients and their families who felt they owed their life and health to her drugs. She kept those letters in her desk and read them often. "To know that you have had an impact on the length of the life of children who had leukemia...there isn't anything that can give you greater satisfaction than that."

      I once asked Dr. Elion about her adopting Admiral Farragut's motto "Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead." I remember she said something which I did not understand. Then she laughed, I laughed too - not knowing why. And so, I choose to remember Gertrude B. Elion, the healing chemist, as a gentle genius, with a cheerful voice filled with warmth and wit and wisdom.

            Raquel Diaz-Sprague
            March 3, 1999

Susan Ambrose, et al Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering: No Universal Constants (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997).

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries (Carol Publishing Group Edition, 1998).

Gertrude Elion Autobiographical article (1995)

Gertrude Elion Personal conversations. (August 1998 - February 1999)

Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).

Margaret W. Rossiter, Women scientists in America, Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite, Nobel Laureates in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1977).