Although the year brought new opportunities, it also brought devastating loss with the death from infectious disease of the man Elion had hoped to marry. She received her degree in 1941, just as World War II was drawing more men out of industry and into the military. Having completed the course work for her master’s degree, Elion taught science in the New York City public schools while completing her graduate research project. Although she was only paid $20 a week, she managed to save some money, and with the help of her parents was able to pursue graduate studies at New York University, where she was the only female student in her chemistry classes. Rather than remain idle, she accepted an unpaid position as laboratory assistant to gain experience and was eventually hired full-time. She eventually found short-term work teaching biochemistry at New York Hospital School of Nursing, but when the assignment ended after three months she found herself unemployed again. There were few women working in the field, and many laboratories refused to hire women altogether. The ongoing financial hardship imposed by the Great Depression of the 1930s kept Elion from pursuing graduate studies immediately, but in her first years after college, she had difficulty finding work as a chemist. During that year, her grandfather died of cancer, instilling in her a desire to do all she could to try and cure the disease. Entering Hunter College that fall, Elion graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. Still grieving for her grandfather, she decided to study chemistry, with the hope of contributing to the fight against cancer.
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Fortunately she was accepted at Hunter College, the women’s college of the City University of New York, which offered free tuition to qualified students. Elion graduated from high school at age 15, but with her father’s savings wiped out, her educational choices were limited. The stock market crash of 1929 wrecked the family’s finances, and in 1933, the family suffered another blow, with the death from cancer of Gertrude’s beloved grandfather. She enjoyed school and looked forward to pursuing a college education.
While Gertrude’s mother attended to her baby brother, Gertrude spent more time with a grandfather newly arrived from Europe. After the arrival of her younger brother, the family moved to more spacious quarters in the Bronx, where they prospered through the 1920s.
Elion became a dentist, and for her first seven years young Gertrude lived with her parents in a small apartment adjoining her father’s dental office. Her father had immigrated from Lithuania, her mother from Russian-ruled Poland, while both were barely in their teens. Gertrude Belle Elion was born in New York City. FebruGertrude Elion, at age three-and-a-half, with her mother.
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