The woman from which the HeLa cells are derived was named Henrietta Lacks, and she was a wife and mother of five when she passed away at John Hopkins University at the age of thirty-one. A sample of one of her tumors was sent to George and Maragret Gey who had been seeking a line of human cells that would survive indefinitely outside the body for research purposes. The tumor cells they received multiplied like nothing they had ever seen before and soon the cells, dubbed HeLa in a truncated form of Lacks' name, were being shipped to their colleagues stationed around the world. The cells later became a laboratory standard and have even been grown in space.