Gertrude Elion: It really wasn’t until I got out of college and started looking for a job. And it really hit me because I had done well in school, graduated summa cum laude, and I thought, well, you know, there is no reason somebody won’t give me a try. But wherever I went — it was a Depression time, it was a time that there weren’t many jobs to begin with, and what there were, they couldn’t see any reason to take a woman. They would interview me for long periods of time, but then they would say, “Well, we think you’d be a distracting influence in the laboratory.” Well, I guess I was kind of cute at the age of 19, but I can’t imagine that I would have been a distracting influence. I would have been so busy working that — you know. But anyway, it was very discouraging.