Nobel Prize

Rosalyn Yalow became a physicist at a time when being a woman was a serious impediment to success. But succeed she did. With her research partner Solomon Berson, she made a transformative contribution to medical research: radioimmunoassay, a method for measuring concentrations of substances in the blood.

Carol Greider achieved success in molecular biology in the same way she overcame dyslexia as a child: with persistence and creativity. She discovered telomerase, an enzyme that is key to the ageing process and the growth of cancer cells, and has major implications for medical research.

Tu Youyou turned to Chinese medical texts from the Zhou, Qing, and Han Dynasties to find a traditional cure for malaria, ultimately extracting a compound – artemisinin – that has saved millions of lives. When she isolated the ingredient she believed would work, she volunteered to be the first human subject. She is the first mainland Chinese scientist to have received a Nobel Prize in a scientific category, and she did so without a doctorate, a medical degree, or training abroad.

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard approaches biology with the rigour of a scientist and the sensibility of an artist. She helped solve one of biology’s great mysteries: how the genes in a fertilised egg form an embryo. She pursues her love of music and cooking in her spare time, but even her work itself – the quest to understand nature – is, she believes, a creative act.

Gerty Cori uncovered the process of cellular energy storage and release, answering one of the most fundamental questions about how the human body works. In so doing, she and her husband and lifelong research partner, Carl, transformed the study of biology, proving that the clarity of molecular chemistry could and should be applied to the opaque mechanisms of biology.

With the drugs that she created, Gertrude Elion fulfilled her life’s mission: to alleviate human suffering. Beyond the individual drugs she discovered, she pioneered a new, more scientific approach to drug development that forever altered – and accelerated – medical research.

Rita Levi-Montalcini began her scientific career in danger, as a Jew in Fascist Italy. She ended it in triumph, as the neuroembryologist who co-discovered nerve growth factor, a prominent figure in Italian politics, and an active researcher and mentor until her death at the age of 103.

Linda Buck was fascinated by one seemingly simple question: how does our sense of smell work? Once she started to look for the answer, she didn’t let it go. She followed the olfactory process step by step to the very heart of what makes us human: our perceptions, preferences and memories.

Throughout her career, Barbara McClintock studied the cytogenetics of maize, making discoveries so far beyond the understanding of the time that other scientists essentially ignored her work for more than a decade. But she persisted, trusting herself and the evidence under her microscope.

Elizabeth Blackburn has evolved from a self-described “lab rat” to an explorer in the realms of health and public policy. She discovered the molecular structure of telomeres and co-discovered the enzyme telomerase, essential pieces in the puzzle of cellular division and DNA replication.