Tu Youyou (born 1930) is the Chinese pharmaceutical chemist who discovered artemisinin, the most effective malaria treatment in history: leading the secret Project 523 from 1969, she extracted the compound from sweet wormwood in 1972 and shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
With no advanced equipment and working through the Cultural Revolution, she turned to ancient Chinese medical texts for leads — and found, in a 4th-century handbook, the clue that unlocked a cure now saving millions of lives a year.
