Portrait of Tu Youyou

Birthday profile

Tu Youyou

Tu Youyou, Chinese chemist and pharmacist, Nobel Prize laureate

Born
December 30, 1930
Age in 2026
96
Zodiac sign
Capricorn
Birth year
1930

About Tu Youyou

Tu Youyou (Chinese: 屠呦呦; pinyin: Tú Yōuyōu; born 30 December 1930) is a Nobel Prize-winning Chinese malariologist and pharmaceutical chemist. She discovered artemisinin (also known as qīnghāosù, 青蒿素) and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura. Tu is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. She is also the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award. Tu was born, educated and carried out her research exclusively in China. Tu was bestowed the Medal of the Republic, the highest honorary medal of the People's Republic of China, in September 2019. == Early life == Tu was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China, on 30 December 1930. My [first] name, Youyou, was given by my father, who adapted it from the sentence 呦呦鹿鳴, 食野之蒿 translated as "Deer bleat youyou while eating wild Hao" in the Chinese Book of Odes. How this links my whole life with qinghao will probably remain an interesting coincidence forever.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Tu Youyou was born

Tu Youyou was born in 1930. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1930

  • #1 song"Georgia on My Mind" – Hoagy Carmichael
  • Top movieAll Quiet on the Western Front
  • Best-selling bookCimarron – Edna Ferber

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentBobby Jones wins the Grand Slam of golf
  • Top headlineFirst FIFA World Cup held in Uruguay
  • Technology milestonePlanet Pluto discovered
  • Defining fadMiniature golf craze
  • Notable inventionScotch tape
  • World population2.07 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderHerbert Hoover
  • Sports championPhiladelphia Athletics (World Series)
  • U.S. population123.2M

1930 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Tu Youyou's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19302026
Gas$0.20$3.45/gal
Average home$6,000$435,000
Average income$3,500$67,500
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population123.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.