Youyou Tu 屠呦呦, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015

Tu Youyou 屠呦呦 is a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist and educator. She is best known for discovering artemisinin (also known as qinghaosu) and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, which saved millions of lives. Her discovery of artemisinin and its treatment of malaria is regarded as a significant breakthrough of tropical medicine in the 20th century and health improvement for people of tropical developing countries in South Asia, Africa, and South America. For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura. Tu is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category, as well as the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award. She was born and educated and carried out research exclusively in China.