Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman (1921-2011), an American medical physicist, shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with American scientists Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally. Yalow was recognized for her work in the development of a highly sensitive radioimmunoassay (RIA). An RIA “tags” substances in the blood with a radioactive label, so that even minute quantities can be detected and measured. Yalow and Solomon Berson first used this instrument in 1959 to study insulin concentration in the blood of diabetics. See Guillemin, Roger Charles Louis ; Schally, Andrew Victor .
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was born on July 19, 1921, in New York City. In 1941, she graduated from Hunter College, then a women-only college in New York City and, in 1945, she received a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In 1947, she was appointed as a consultant in nuclear physics at the Bronx Veterans’ Administration Hospital in New York City. In 1950, she was made assistant chief of the radioisotope service there. In 1968, she was appointed research professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. In 1973, she became director of the Solomon A. Berson Research Laboratory at the Bronx Veterans’ Administration Hospital. Yalow died on May 30, 2011.
