Alice Ball: chemist who developed a treatment for leprosy

Despite Alice Ball's tragically short life, her research made a huge difference to the lives of many patients in the first half of the 20th century. Her investigations of chaulmoogra oil, a natural remedy for Hansen's disease (leprosy), resulted in a preparation that was injectable and avoided the side-effects of the oil. Her extract became the standard treatment for Hansen's disease, until it was replaced by sulphur drugs and antibiotics in the late 1930s and 1940s, allowing people with the disease to return from isolation to their communities.