China finally honours Nobel Prize-winning female scientist

BEIJING — Nearly 45 years after the discovery that won her the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2015, pharmacologist Tu Youyou has finally received official recognition at home, jointly winning China’s top government science award this week.

Ms Tu, credited with the discovery of artemisinin to treat malaria, became the first female scientist to win China’s top science and technology award. Another winner was Zhao Zhongxian, a leading physicist specialising in superconductive materials.

The delayed award for Ms Tu showed that China’s scientific community “has done some introspection already”, said Rao Yi, a professor at Peking University.

Ms Tu’s research had previously been recognised internationally, when she won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 2011. Four years later, she became the first Chinese national to win the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, and the first female Chinese national to win a Nobel Prize in any category.

But she has received little recognition for her achievements in her home country — she does not have a doctoral degree and is not a member of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences.

At a ceremony in Beijing, the 86-year-old was at long last handed the National Supreme Science and Technology Award, which also comes with a cash prize of five million yuan (S$1.04 million).

The discovery of artemisinin won government accolades twice in China, in 1978 and 1987, but it was a “collective honour” given to all involved in Project 532, a research programme set up in 1967 to fight malaria in what was then North Vietnam, and in southern China. It involved 500 researchers from 60 institutes around the country, including Ms Tu.

However, Ms Tu’s crucial role in the project had long been disputed by her peers and even national science award committees. Some analysts say she was overlooked because she is not a member of the top government-backed research institute. When she won a relatively low-level domestic science award in 1992, another researcher, Wu Yulin, even filed a complaint against her, but the authorities eventually ruled in favour of Ms Tu. She was left in relative anonymity until 2011, when two researchers at the United States National Institutes of Health, Dr Louis Miller and Dr Su Xinzhuan, looked into the history of artemisinin research and identified Ms Tu as the main contributor to the drug’s discovery.

The following year, Ms Tu’s name appeared in the nomination list for China’s top government science award, but she did not win. Many scholars, including Peking University’s Professor Rao, believe it was because a fellow researcher with a chip on his shoulder was on the award investigation team.

In 2015, the Nobel Committee acknowledged when giving her the top international recognition that Ms Tu played a decisive role in the research by using ether to extract active ingredients from plants. But Ms Tu failed to win China’s top accolade that same year.

The Chinese government’s failure to recognise Ms Tu in 2015 further exposed flaws in how China chooses its top award winners, said Zhou Cheng, a professor at the Centre for Social Studies of Science at Peking University.

A number of select major institutions must recommend the nominees for the award. In 2015, the government demanded that priority should be given to researchers who were still working in the field, reducing the chances for retired scholars such as Ms Tu to get selected. CAIXIN