George H. Hitchings was among the most prolific of modern pharmaceutical scientists. He worked at Burroughs Wellcome Company, a British pharmaceutical company with research facilities in the United States, for more than thirty years before his retirement in 1975. Hitchings produced many important pharmaceuticals for treating diseases such as cancer, gout, and malaria, and for preventing rejection of transplanted organs. His contributions were based on the premise that an understanding of what makes diseased cells different from normal cells makes it possible to exploit those differences to destroy cancer cells or foreign invaders such as bacteria or viruses with drugs. For his work in finding treatments for serious diseases, Hitchings and his long-time Burroughs Wellcome collaborator Gertrude Elion shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with British pharmaceutical scientist Sir James Black. It was the first time since 1957 that pharmaceutical scientists had been awarded the prize.

George Herbert...