Henrietta Lacks (August 18 (?), 1920 October 4, 1951) was the involuntary donor of cells from her cancerous tumor, which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create an immortal cell line for medical research. This is now known as the HeLa cell line.

Cells taken from this woman in 1951 have been used, regrown and implemented in countless scientific endeavors from medicine to the space travel. known to the scientific community as HeLa, her cells have been invaluable to the scientific community.

If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings