BREAKERS OF BARRIERS

A father thinking about a name for his newborn daughter read the line in the poem: "the deer make a you-you sound as they eat the wild hao plant."

The man, whose name was TU, decided that he liked that sound, and named his bright daughter you you.

But as she grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, he felt that the political situation was unstable and trouble lay ahead.

He would soon be proved right. Little you you did well at her school Ningo, china, and went on to study pharmaceuticals and chinese traditional medicine at university.

But then disaster struck. In the 1960s, a political movement in china called the CULTURAL REVOLUTION put all scientist onto a black list.

You you and her husband, are also scientist, were sent to work on a farm, and their child sent to a nursery. TU you you also expected to be shamed and banished.

Her family had been broken up and the future seemed dark. But the china's leader, Mao Zedong, had a secret. He needed at least a few scientist to keep working on a killer disease, a type of malaria, which was killing soldiers.

He set up a top-secret department called project 523. The number came from the date the operation start May 23, 1967.

So, you you was commissioned to find a cure for an incurable strain of a deadly disease.

It seemed an impossible task. By the stage, scientist around the world had tested more then 240,000 compound and none of them worked.

The global scientist community had failed.

TU you you, who had come from a book loving family, had an idea instead of going to the lab, she went to a library (another thing that the ruling party did not approve of).

She read ancient text which featured traditional wisdom.

The scientist found a 1600-yera old recipe with a curious title: "Emergency Prescription to keep up one's Sleeve". It called for the use of a chinese herb called qinghao, or just hao for short.

But she recalled that they had boiled that plant to check its extract, and it had failed to make any difference.

Then, in a paragraph written in AD 340, she read that the essence of the hao plant should be extracted in cold water only.

She tried again with cold water - and this time it worked, killing the malaria parasite. She needed a human volunteer to take it, to prove that it was safe, and she chose herself.

TU you you medicine worked remarkably well, and has now saved the countless lives around the world.

The cultural revolution came to an end, and she was reunited with her family.

Her achievement was celebrated world-wide when she was given a noble prize.

But when she reflected toward her life, she noticed some thing curious.

She picked up her father's book of poetry and noticed that his favorite line mentioned the sound that had given her name, and something else - the wild hao plant that was to be her greatest discovery.

'The deer make a you you sound as they eat a wild hao plant".

Literature really is remarkable thing.

TU discovered that the leaves of sweet wormwood contain artemisinin and that the compound is extracted optimally at relatively low temperatures. TU initially was prevented from publishing her team’s findings, because of restrictions on the publication of scientific information that were in place in China at the time. The work finally reached international audiences, to wide acclaim, in the early 1980s.

In the early 2000s, the World Health Organization recommended the use of artemisinin-based combination drug therapies as first-line treatment for malaria.

As of 2023, she is the chief scientist of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. As of 2007, her office is in an old apartment building in Dongcheng District, Beijing. Before 2011, Tu Youyou had been obscure for decades, and is described as "almost completely forgotten by people".