Tar heel junior historian [2006 : fall, v.46 : no.1]

Elion always was a pioneer for women. When Hitchings became vice president in charge of research at Burroughs Wellcome in 1967, she filled his old job as head of the Department of Experimental Therapy. She received the National Medal of Science from President George Bush in 1991. That same year, she became the first woman inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, honored for important work on a drug called 6-mercap- topurine. Starting in the 1950s, it offered new hope in the fight against leukemia, a cancer that killed many children quickly. Continued study led a few years later to a related drug that blocked the human body's rejection of unrelated tissues, allowing the first kidney transplants from nonfamily donors. Arranon, a drug recently approved in the United States to fight some kinds of leukemia and lymphoma, started with team¬ work that Elion took part in near the end of her life, according to the GlaxoSmithKline Web site (www.glaxosmithkline.com). "My greatest satisfaction has come from know¬ ing that our efforts helped to save lives and relieve suffering," Hitchings wrote in his Nobel Prize autobiography. "When I was baptized, my father held me up and dedicated my life to the service of mankind. I am very proud that, in some measure, 1 have been able to fulfill his hopes." Learn more about Nobel Prize winners at Web site httptl/nobel prize.org. Re sure to check out the Educational Gaines section ! Dr. George H. Hitchings received the North Carolina Award in Science in 1980 and Gertrude Elion received it in 1989. The North Carolina Award is the highest honor bestowed by the state; medals have been given since 1964 in literature, fine arts, science, and public service. To learn about other North Carolina Award winners in science, access http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc. us/ncawards/ncaalpha.asp. The list includes Dr. Martin Rodbell (1925-1998), who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1994. Rodbell — who spent decades with the National Institutes of Health in Research Triangle Park — made important discoveries about the way human body cells communi¬ cate, leading to improvements in the fight against diabetes, cholera, cancer, and other illnesses. In 2003 Dr. William E. Thornton received the award. A physicist, physician, educator, air force pilot, and writer, he was the first astro¬ naut from North Carolina. On space shuttle Challenger, Thornton in 1983 became the first physician to build his own lab and conduct his own experiments in space. Those are just some of his accom¬ plishments! Inventions in the Tobacco Industry by Ben Roberts* Before the Civil War, North Carolina was mostly an agricultural society with a large portion of its population living and working on farms. One of the main crops grown was tobac: со, which was shipped to other states to be turned into tobacco products. Early products included chewing tobacco, smoking tobacco, cigars, and snuff. At first, cigarettes were rolled by hand, a very slow process. In the early years, tobacco manufacturing was centered in New York City and later in Richmond, Virginia. Soon after the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, large-scale tobacco manufacturing devel¬ oped in Durham and Winston-Salem. In North Carolina — a state with limited industry at the time — few people had mechanical skills, except for some who had worked on the railroads. As with other busi¬ nesses, machinery gradually was introduced into the tobac¬ co industry and then improved. Production machinery was built in far¬ away countries such as Great Britain and Sweden, as well as in Virginia and other states. Early cigarette paper was manufactured in France. Little about tobacco inventions has been recorded in history books. With the industry being highly competitive, com¬ panies often kept production-related improvements secret. One amazing invention to help the tobacco industry in North Carolina was the Bull Jack, a machine that filled muslin bags with Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco and applied labels to the bags. (Top) In the early years of North Carolina's tobacco industry, tobacco often was sold in small bags and used to roll cigarettes by hand or to fill a pipe. Image by Charles H. Cooper from John Thomas Dalton and the Development of Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco, courtesy of Ben Roberts . (Aborv) When cigarettes were made by hand, employees called clippers used special scissors to cut the tobacco sticking out of the ends of the cigarettes linage courtesy of lien Roberts. 72 I IIIH, Fall 200()