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The Legends VaultScientists & Innovators

Tu Youyou Had NO PhD and Won a Nobel Prize

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Transcript

She had no PhD, no foreign training, and no famous lab. She found a cure that saved millions.

In the 1960s malaria was killing millions, and the parasite had beaten every known drug.

China handed Tu Youyou a secret mission: find a cure the whole world had missed.

After thousands of failed compounds, she turned to ancient medical texts.

A 1,600-year-old recipe told her not to boil the herb, but to soak it cold.

Boiling had been destroying the cure. The cold method finally unlocked it.

To prove it was safe, she tested the extract on herself before anyone else.

The compound, artemisinin, wiped out the parasite where every other drug had failed.

It became the world's frontline malaria treatment and has saved millions of lives.

Decades later, the researcher with no PhD became the first Chinese woman to win a science Nobel.

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