Meeting with a Nobel Prize Winner – Chinese Scientist Tu Youyou

It was the first snow of winter in Beijing on Friday Morning 6^th November 2015. The beautiful snowflakes paved a wide carpet to the Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (ICMM).

It was freezing cold outside, but there was a warm atmosphere in a meeting room in the ICMM. In the room, 85 year old Chinese scientist Professor Tu Youyou and her colleagues were having a pleasant conversation with Judy MacArthur Clark and Daniel Levy from the UK Home Office, and me from the Science and Innovation Team (SIN) in the British Embassy, Beijing.

Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in October 2015 for her discovery of artemisinin. Millions of lives have been saved and benefited from this drug which is derived from traditional Chinese medicine. China is immensely proud of both her and her team.

Judy, who is a Trustee of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH), sent congratulations on her Nobel Prize. The conversation reflected the growing relationship between the UK and China highlighted by President Xi’s recent visit to the UK and the new Golden Era in relations, as well as a taste of history given that anti-malaria research was started and encouraged during Mao’s era. Tu said that her Nobel Prize reflects not only her individual success, but also a team contribution.

Tu is looking forward to future collaborations with the UK and hopes her Nobel Prize will inspire a younger generation. She said that there needs to be collaboration and integration on traditional Chinese and Western medicine. Her potential involvement in the RSTMH’s international conference on malaria research in September 2016 in Cambridge UK will be a significant contribution in bringing these two scientific cultures together.

The snow nearly stopped, we walked out of the meeting room with a warm memory.