Assaying the unknown (Rosalyn Yalow)

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Link: http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/mdd/v04/i09/html/09timeline.html

Rosalyn Yalow: Assaying the unknown This pioneering woman physicist received a Nobel Prize for her work in the development of the radioimmunoassay.

One of the most important American research scientists of the 20th century was also one of the most unlikely. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow grew up at a time when women were assumed to be less intellectually qualified than men and were given little access to scientific training. Yet with talent and good fortune, Yalow eventually earned a Ph.D. in physics, and in 1977 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of the radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body using radioactive-labeled material. Yalow’s achievements are not only essential to the story of modern medical research, they also help provide a broader understanding of the role of women in American science. Born in 1921 in the Bronx, New York, Sussman discovered in elementary school that she was extraordinarily talented in mathematics. An influential high school teacher stoked her interest in chemistry, but when she matriculated at Hunter College, she was drawn to physics. Influential in her intellectual development were Eve Curie’s biography of her mother, Nobel laureate Marie Curie, and a college colloquium given by Enrico Fermi on nuclear fission. Although Sussman was enthusiastic about a career in physics, she realized that it was unlikely that good graduate schools would admit (and offer financial support to) a woman interested in science, much less a Jewish woman. Immediately after graduation, she was forced to take work as a secretary to a Columbia University biochemist, but when an unexpected assistantship offer came from the University of Illinois in 1941, she jumped at the chance to pursue her dream. Sussman was the first woman at the university’s College of Engineering since 1917, and her opportunity came in part because the United States was mobilizing for war. As men were drafted into the military, many universities began accepting women into graduate programs rather than close the schools. No matter why she was admitted to Illinois, her academic performance once she was there was outstanding. Upon graduation in 1945 with a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, Rosalyn Yalow (she had married a fellow student, Aaron Yalow, in 1941) accepted a position as an engineer at the


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