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,[7] he joined Alpha Chi Sigma in 1929.[8][9][10]
Career and research
Following his PhD, he worked at Harvard and Case Western Reserve University. In 1942, he went to work for Wellcome Research Laboratories at Tuckahoe, where he began working with Gertrude Elion in 1944. Drugs Hitchings' team worked on included 2,6-diaminopurine (a compound to treat leukemia) and p-chlorophenoxy-2,4-diaminopyrimidine (a folic acid antagonist). According to his Nobel Prize autobiography,
In 1967 Hitchings became vice president in Charge of Research of Burroughs-Wellcome. He became Scientist Emeritus in 1976. He also served as adjunct professor of pharmacology and of experimental medicine from 1970 to 1985 at Duke University.[11]
Hitchings founded the Triangle Community Foundation in 1983. Hitchings is a member of the Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame.
Personal life
His first wife, Beverly Reimer Hitchings, died in 1985. Hitchings remarried in 1989 to Joyce Carolyn Shaver-Hitchings, MD. Dr. Shaver-Hitchings died in 2009.[12]
^Raju, T N (2000), "The Nobel chronicles. 1988: James Whyte Black, (b 1924), Gertrude Elion (1918–99), and George H Hitchings (1905–98).", The Lancet, vol. 355, no. 9208 (published Mar 18, 2000), p. 1022, doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(05)74775-9, PMID10768469, S2CID54345690
^van Zwieten, P A (1988), "[Nobel prize for Medicine 1988]", Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, vol. 132, no. 53 (published Dec 31, 1988), pp. 2401–2, PMID3063980
^Sjöqvist, F (1988), "[Nobel Prize in medicine: three share this year's Nobel Prize in medicine. Important principles in drug therapy]", Läkartidningen, vol. 85, no. 43 (published Oct 26, 1988), pp. 3542–7, PMID2462143
^Then, R L (1993), "History and future of antimicrobial diaminopyrimidines.", Journal of Chemotherapy (Florence, Italy), vol. 5, no. 6 (published Dec 1993), pp. 361–8, PMID8195827
^Giner-Sorolla, A (1988), "The excitement of a suspense story, the beauty of a poem: the work of Hitchings and Elion", Trends Pharmacol. Sci., vol. 9, no. 12 (published Dec 1988), pp. 437–8, doi:10.1016/0165-6147(88)90133-2, PMID3078084
^Talalay, P (1969), "Presentation of Dr. George Herbert Hitchings for the Passano Award.", JAMA, vol. 209, no. 9 (published Sep 1, 1969), pp. 1337–8, doi:10.1001/jama.209.9.1337, PMID4895870
^Dameshek, W (1970), "The deVilliers award of the Leukemia Society of America Inc. to George H. Hitchings, Ph.D.", Bibliotheca Haematologica, no. 36, pp. XXI–XXII, PMID4950964