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YYalow, Rosalyn SussmanALOW, ROSALYNSUSSMAN(1921- )
American medical physicistRosalyn Sussman Yalow was co-developer of radioimmunoas-
say (RIA), a technique that uses radioactive isotopes to meas-
ure small amounts of biological substances. In widespread
use, the RIA helps scientists and medical professionals meas-
ure the concentrations of hormones, vitamins, viruses,
enzymes, and drugs, among other substances. Yalow’s work
concerning RIA earned her a share of the Nobel Prize in phys-
iology or medicine in the late 1970s. At that time, she was only
the second woman to receive the Nobel Prize in medicine.
During her career, Yalow also received acclaim for being the
first woman to attain a number of other scientific achieve-
ments.
Yalow was born on July 19, 1921, in The Bronx, New
York, to Simon Sussman and Clara Zipper Sussman. Her
father, owner of a small business, had been born on the Lower
East Side of New York City to Russian immigrant parents. At
the age of four, Yalow’s mother had journeyed to the United
States from Germany. Although neither parent had attended
high school, they instilled a great enthusiasm for and respect
of education in their daughter. Yalow also credits her father
with helping her find the confidence to succeed in school,
teaching her that girls could do just as much as boys. Yalow
learned to read before she entered kindergarten, although her
family did not own many books. Instead, Yalow and her older
brother, Alexander, made frequent visits to the public library.
During her youth, Yalow became interested in mathe-
matics. At Walton High School in the Bronx, her interest
turned to science, especially chemistry. After graduation,
Yalow attended Hunter College, a women’s school in New
York that eventually became part of the City University of
New York. She credits two physics professors, Dr. Herbert
Otis and Dr. Duane Roller, for igniting her penchant for
physics. This occurred in the latter part of the 1930s, a time
when many new discoveries were made in nuclear physics. It
was this field that Yalow ultimately chose for her major. In1939, she was further inspired after hearing American physi-
cist Enrico Fermi lecture about the discovery of nuclear fis-
sion, which had earned him the Nobel Prize the previous year.
As Yalow prepared for her graduation from Hunter
College, she found that some practical considerations intruded
on her passion for physics. In fact, Yalow’s parents urged her
to pursue a career as an elementary school teacher. Yalow her-
self also thought it unrealistic to expect any of the top gradu-
ate schools in the country to accept her into a doctoral program
or offer her the financial support that men received. “However,
my physics professors encouraged me and I persisted,” she
explained in Les Prix Nobel 1977.
Yalow made plans to enter graduate school via other
means. One of her earlier college physics professors, who had
left Hunter to join the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, arranged for Yalow to work as secretary to Dr.
Rudolf Schoenheimer, a biochemist at Columbia University in
New York. According to the plan, this position would give
Yalow an opportunity to take some graduate courses in physics,
and eventually provide a way for her to enter a graduate a
school and pursue a degree. But Yalow never needed her plan.
The month after graduating from Hunter College in January
1941, she was offered a teaching assistantship in the physics
department of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Gaining acceptance to the physics graduate program in
the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois was
one of many hurdles that Yalow had to cross as a woman in the
field of science. For example, when she entered the University
in September 1941, she was the only woman in the College of
Engineering’s faculty, which included 400 professors and
teaching assistants. She was the first woman in more than two
decades to attend the engineering college. Yalow realized that
she had been given a space at the prestigious graduate school
because of the shortage of male candidates, who were being
drafted into the armed services in increasing numbers as
America prepared to enter World War II.
Yalow’s strong work orientation aided her greatly in her
first year in graduate school. In addition to her regular coursewomi_Y 5/7/03 9:15 AM Page 607