Q 01/05

In an early 1940s job at a grocery chain's food lab, Gertrude Elion tested the acidity of which food?

A) Ketchup

B) Mustard

C) Pickles

D) Yogurt

Answer · why

C) Pickles

Pickles were on her bench at the A&P grocery chain, where she spent a year and a half on quality control. She left once the repetitive work stopped te...

Q 02/05

Which qualification did Nobel laureate Gertrude Elion never finish, after her night school demanded full-time study?

A) A doctorate

B) A master's degree

C) A bachelor's degree

D) A high school diploma

Answer · why

A) A doctorate

A doctorate was the one thing Elion gave up, choosing her job with George Hitchings over Brooklyn Polytechnic's ultimatum. Decades later the same scho...

Q 03/05

Whose death from stomach cancer, when Gertrude Elion was 15, made her decide to study science and fight disease?

A) Her father

B) Her grandfather

C) Her uncle

D) Her schoolteacher

Answer · why

B) Her grandfather

Her grandfather had lived nearby since she was about three, taking her to the park and telling her stories. Watching him die in hospital convinced her...

Q 04/05

Gertrude Elion's drug azathioprine, sold as Imuran, first made which operation work between unrelated people?

A) Coronary bypasses

B) Blood transfusions

C) Cataract operations

D) Kidney transplants

Answer · why

D) Kidney transplants

Kidney transplants between unrelated donors and patients had almost always failed until Imuran calmed the immune system. Elion handed the compound to ...

Q 05/05

Who first told Gertrude Elion she had won the Nobel Prize, in a 6:30 a.m. phone call she took for a joke?

A) A reporter

B) Her brother

C) George Hitchings

D) The Swedish king

Answer · why

A) A reporter

A reporter rang while she was getting dressed, and she told him it was a sick joke. Her phone stayed so busy that the Nobel committee could not get th...