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She was a scientist at a risky time in Chinese history

Tu trained as a scientist in communist China, however by the 1960s the profession was a dangerous job in the centralist state. Her inspiration to pursue medical research stemmed from a tuberculosis infection, which interrupted her high-school academic years. In 2011, she received the GlaxoSmithKline Outstanding Achievement Award in Life Science, the Lasker-De-Bakey Clinical Medical Research Award, and the Outstanding Contribution Award.

In 1955, after receiving a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutics, Tu expanded her research on Chinese herbal medicine at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. After two and a half years of training in traditional Chinese medicine, Tu began work at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing.

During her early years of research, Tu focused on a traditional Chinese medicine, Lobelia Chinensis, which could cure schistosomiasis, a widespread infection in 20th century South China.

Tu carried on her work in the 1960s and 70s during China's Cultural Revolution, when scientists were one of the nine black categories in Chinese society according to Mao's theory. Furthermore, Tu volunteered to be the first human subject. Between 1969-1971, her team tested 200 of the 380 herbal abstracts made from over 2,000 recipes and found that Artemisia annua, sweet wormwood, was an effective compound used to treat intermittent fevers.

I do not want fame. Tu studied the chemical structure and pharmacology of artemisinin and volunteered as the first human subject in the drug’s clinical trials.

In 1980, following the Chinese economic reform, Tu was promoted to the academic rank of Researcher, the highest researching rank in mainland China. In 2015, in honor of her work with artemisinin, she became the first Chinese Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine and the first Chinese woman to receive a Nobel Prize.

As Tu also presented at the project seminar, its preparation was described in a 1,600-year old text, in a recipe titled, "Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One's Sleeve." At first, it didn't work, because they extracted it with boiling water, the same as recorded in the classic.

Her notebook summarized 640 prescriptions. The animal tests showed it was completely effective in mice and monkeys. As her Nobel Prize summary states her work has “led to the survival and improved health of millions of people.”