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What Chinese Scientist's Nobel Win Says About Science In China

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Tu Youyou, the first Chinese woman to win a Nobel prize for medicine, attends a symposium organized by China's National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) and other departments in Beijing on October 8, 2015. Tu said she was "not really surprised" to be recognized after a remarkable career, which saw her team test a breakthrough malaria drug on themselves during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Tu Youyou, the first Chinese woman to win a Nobel prize for medicine, attends a symposium organized by China's National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) and other departments in Beijing on October 8, 2015. Tu said she was "not really surprised" to be recognized after a remarkable career, which saw her team test a breakthrough malaria drug on themselves during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

This week Dr. Tu Youyou became the first Chinese Nobel laureate in natural science, and she is also the first Nobel laureate who received all of her scientific training in China.

During the Cultural Revolution, Dr. Tu lead a secret military program that succeeded in finding a way to treat drug-resistant malaria using traditional Chinese medicine, instead of Western medicine. Yet when she won her Nobel this week, she was not part of China's prestigious academy of sciences.

Denis Simon, an expert on science in China, discusses this with Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson.

Guest

  • Denis Simon, an expert on science in China, and executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan.

This segment aired on October 9, 2015.

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