caption death_date birth_place nationality work_institutions birth_date known_for prizes image article_title name
george h. hitchings in 1988 february 27 , 1998 hoquiam , washington american case western reserve university duke university april 18 , 1905 chemotherapy gairdner in physiology or medicine -lrb- 1988 -rrb- foundation international award -lrb- 1968 -rrb- nobel prize george h. hitchings 1988.jpg george h. hitchings
 george herbert hitchings
george h. hitchings

george herbert hitchings -lrb- april 18 , 1905 -- february 27 , 1998 -rrb- was an american doctor who shared the 1988 nobel prize in physiology or medicine with sir james black and gertrude elion `` for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment , '' hitchings specifically for his work on chemotherapy .
hitchings was born in hoquiam , washington , in 1905 , and grew up there , in berkeley , california , san diego , bellingham , washington , and seattle .
he graduated from seattle 's franklin high school , where he was salutatorian , in 1923 , and from there went to the university of washington , from which he graduated with a degree in chemistry `` cum laude '' in 1927 , after having been elected to phi beta kappa as a junior the year before .
that summer , he worked at the university 's puget sound biological station at friday harbor on san juan island -lsb- http://depts.washington.edu/fhl/] , and received a master 's degree the next year for his thesis based on that work .
from the university of washington , hitchings went to harvard university as a teaching fellow , ending up at harvard medical school .
before getting his ph.d. in 1933 , he joined alpha chi sigma in 1929 .
during the next ten years , he would work at harvard and case western reserve university .
in 1942 , he went to work for wellcome research laboratories , where he began working with gertrude elion in 1944 .
drugs hitchings ' team worked on included 2,6-diaminopurine -lrb- a compound to treat leukemia -rrb- and p-chlorophenoxy-2 ,4 - diaminopyrimidine -lrb- a folic acid antagonist -rrb- .
according to his nobel prize autobiography , the line of inquiry we had begun in the 1940s yielded new drug therapies for malaria -lrb- pyrimethamine -rrb- , leukemia -lrb- 6-mercaptopurine and thioguanine -rrb- , gout -lrb- allopurinol -rrb- , organ transplantation -lrb- azathioprine -rrb- and bacterial infections -lrb- co-trimoxazole -lrb- trimethoprima -rrb- -rrb- .
the new knowledge contributed by our studies pointed the way for investigations that led to major antiviral drugs for herpes infections -lrb- acyclovir -rrb- and aids -lrb- zidovudine -rrb- .
in 1967 hitchings became vice president in charge of research of burroughs-wellcome .
he became scientist emeritus in 1976 .
he also served as an adjunct faculty member at the duke university school of medicine .
hitchings died in 1998 in chapel hill , north carolina .
hitchings founded the triangle community foundation in 1983 .
hitchings is a member of the medicinal chemistry hall of fame .
his wife died in 1985 .
