Dr. Rosalyn Yalow...

Image Source: NobelPrize.org

Topics: Diagnostic Techniques, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Endocrinology, Metabolism, Nobel Prize, STEM, Women in Science

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977

Born: 19 July 1921, New York, NY, USA

Died: 30 May 2011, New York, NY, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Veterans Administration Hospital, Bronx, NY, USA

Prize motivation: "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones"

Field: diagnostic techniques, endocrinology, metabolism

jointly to Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally "for their discoveries concerning the peptide hormone production of the brain" and the other half to Rosalyn Yalow "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones".

Perhaps the earliest memories I have of being a stubborn, determined child. Through the years my mother had told me that it was unfortunate that I chose to do acceptable things, for if I had chosen otherwise no one would have deflected me from my path.

My mother, nee Clara Zipper, came to America from Germany at the age of four. My father, Simon Sussman, was born on the Lower East Side of New York, the Melting Pot for Eastern European immigrants. Neither had the advantage of a high school education but there was never a doubt that their two children would make it through college. I was an early reader, reading even before kindergarten, and since we did not have books in my home, my older brother, Alexander, was responsible for our trip every week to the Public Library to exchange books already read for new ones to be read.

By seventh grade I was committed to mathematics. A great chemistry teacher at Walton High School, Mr. Mondzak, excited my interest in chemistry, but when I went to Hunter, the college for women in New York City's college system (now the City University of New York), my interest was diverted to physics especially by Professors Herbert N. Otis and Duane Roller. In the spring when I was in college, physics, and in particular nuclear physics, was the most exciting field in the world. It seemed as if every major experiment brought a Nobel Prize. Eve Curie had just published the biography of her mother, Madame Marie Curie, which should be a must on the reading list of every young aspiring female scientist. As a junior at college, I was hanging on nuclear fission - which has resulted not only in the terror and threat of nuclear warfare but also in the ready availability of radioisotopes for medical investigation and in hosts of other peaceful applications.

"Rosalyn Yalow - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 25 Mar 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1977/yalow-facts.html