Editor's note: The year 2015 witnessed some major breakthroughs by Chinese people in science, such as winning China's first Nobel Prize and rolling out the first large-scale domestically manufactured passenger airplane. Let's take a look back on some of the year's most remarkable achievements.
Tu wins China's first Nobel Prize
Chinese scientist Tu Youyou was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her contribution in fighting malaria. The 84-year-old won the prize for her work using artemisinin to treat malaria based on a traditional Chinese herb treatment, making her China's first medicine Nobel laureate.
In late 1960s, Tu started to chair a government project aimed at eradicating malaria. To find a new treatment to fight the disease, Tu and her colleagues looked through many ancient medical books and screened 2,000 recipes before they obtained the pure substance artemisinin.
