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Why do we love Gertrude?
A compelling film could be made of the story of Gertrude Belle Elion's life even before she accomplished worldwide renown. At the age of 19, Gertrude graduated with the highest honors in chemistry and met the man who instantly became the love of her life, a handsome and brilliant young statistics student at CCNY named Leonard Canter. He called her "a brilliant woman ... a vital, fresh, spontaneous, sparkling spirit ... the soft loveliness in my life." As she struggled to be admitted by a graduate program (she would eventually be refused by 15 chemistry programs around the country, mainly for being a woman), she and Canter carried on a deep, romantic relationship filled with outings to parks and plays and conversations on thermodynamics and the Method of Least Squares. They wrote over 300 letters to each other in four years. Throughout this time, Gertrude fought to find a job in her field and some way to afford more schooling. She worked and went to school from early in the morning until ten at night, for a time commuting two-and-a-half hours on the subway. She was sustained by Leonard's love. When they planned for the future, he guaranteed that he did not want her to abandon her chemistry. In return, she told him, "In you I find most of what others must find in religion—faith, hope, consolation, beauty, ecstasy of an almost unearthly quality, and a deep transcending love."
Gertrude had been driven to pursue scientific research originally when her grandfather died from cancer. In 1941, her resolve to discover cures for diseases was steeled when she lost her beloved Leonard to a bacterial heart infection. She was 23 years old, and she would never marry, telling all subsequent suitors that she did not have time. Gertrude threw herself into her work. She eventually earned her Master's degree from NYU and, with so many male chemists off at war, found a position with the pharmaceutical firm Borroughs Wellcome (now Glaxo Wellcome). At Wellcome, Gertrude would begin working with George Hitchings, who, over the course of the subsequent 22 years, would expand her range of work from organic chemistry to biochemistry to pharmacology, and eventually to immunology and virology. During this time, Gertrude helped develop new forms of drugs, including 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP), sold as Purinethol, which helps cure about 80 percent of children with acute leukemia; azathioprine, marketed as Imuran, to prevent rejection of transplanted organs; and allopurinol, marketed as Zyloprim, to treat the gout often associated with chemotherapy. After Hitchings retired, Gertrude went on to create the first true antiviral drug, acyclovir (Zovirax), which is used against herpes. Zovirax became Wellcome's most profitable product. Gertrude's work created great strides in the treatment of viruses, and she personally trained the team that invented the retroviral AIDS drug AZT.
In recognition of these stunning advances in pharmacology, Gertrude was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1988, shared with Hitchings and Sir James W. Black.
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