GlaxoSmithKline plc · CC BY 4.0

Pioneered rational drug design — building medicines around an understanding of their biological target rather than by trial and error — and used it to develop the first drug to fight organ-transplant rejection, the first effective antiviral, and AZT, the first drug widely used against AIDS. She shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George Hitchings and James Black for methods that reshaped how pharmaceuticals are made, all without ever completing a PhD.