Today is a special day for people in medical and biomedical fields, as the 7th December is the day that the Nobel Lectures in Physiology or Medicine are delivered each year at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, to which I have a special emotional link. For many years, as a PhD student and subsequently a Postdoctoral researcher there, I attended the Nobel Lectures.

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The Nobel Prize is awarded “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” And in 2015, Tu Youyou, a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist, became the first Chinese Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine, and the first Chinese woman to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. BBC Icons 2019 named Tu Youyou as one of the four greatest scientists of the twentieth century. Many honours have been awarded to her for the discovery of artemisinin, an effective medicine to treat malaria. In 1969, when Tu was appointed as the head of the antimalarial drug research project, she recalled, “I had no choice but to fully devote myself to accomplishing my duties.” Ever since, she has been keeping her commitment “to develop and provide the best drugs for people around the world.”

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Tu first investigated the Chinese medical classics, and visited practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine all over the country. By 1971, her team had screened over 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes and made 380 herbal extracts. The extract from sweet wormwood (known in Chinese as Qinghao, and also known as Artemisia annua), which had been used to treat intermittent fevers in China since around CE 400, proved to be effective. Tu’s novel treatment for malaria went on to help save millions of lives globally.

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When Tu Youyou presented her Nobel Lecture, “Discovery of Artemisinin – A Gift from Traditional Chinese Medicine to the World” in 2015, because of her health condition, it was suggested that she do this from a comfortable armchair. However, the microphone was too high for her, so the taller Professor Jan Andersson, Adjunct Member of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, held the microphone for Tu by kneeling on the floor for the entire lecture.