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Gertrude ("Trudy") Elion was born in New York
City on January 23, 1918. Her father, Robert
Elion, a dentist, had immigrated to the
United States from Lithuania at the age of 12. Her
mother, Bertha
Cohen, came to America alone at the age
of 14 from the part of Russia that is now Poland;
studying English at night school, she worked in the
needle trades before marrying Robert at 19.
From a very young age, Trudy displayed the
qualities that would lead her to a Nobel Prize.
Even before she started school, she wished to learn
about the world around her. A voracious reader with
"an insatiable thirst for knowledge," she
was interested in everything around her. "It
didn't matter if it was history, languages, or
science," she later recalled. "I was just
like a sponge."
As a student at the all-girls Walton High School
in the Bronx, Elion was not yet focused on science.
Exploring history, writing, and performing, she
received the school's Cooperation in Government
Award and a prize in American history; belonged to
the History Dramatic Club, the Electron Science
Club, and the Glee Club; and published an essay and
a poem in the yearbook. Propelled by her quick
intelligence, she skipped two grades and graduated
from high school in 1933, at the age of 15.
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