Gertrude Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist well-known for discovering many medications, including medications for HIV/AIDS, herpes, immunity disorders, and leukemia. Elion developed a multitude of new drugs, using innovative research methods that later led to the development of the first drug used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS: Zidovudine (AZT). She and her colleague, George H. Hitchings, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1988.

Alice Catherine Evans was an outstanding microbiologist who made one of the most medically important discoveries of the 20^th century. She is well-recognized for establishing that humans are infected by the once-common, painful disease brucellosis from raw cow and goat milk. Brucellosis, a recurrent disease also known as Malta or undulant fever, causes shooting pain in the joints, fever, and depression. For years, her research findings and results were scorned and ignored because of her gender and because she did not have a doctorate degree. She lobbied successfully for the pasteurization of all milk and lived to see the disease fall into obscurity.

Arab pioneers in medicine were not only physicians and surgeons, but Arab nurses played a valuable part too. One of the most famous names in Arab nursing is Rufaida bint Saad Al-Aslameya, the first nurse in the Islamic and Eastern world.

An extraordinarily talented woman who excelled in music, art, writing, and public speaking. English novelist, journalist, traveler, and Egyptologist, Amelia Edwards was born in London in 1831.