YALOW, ROSALYN SUSSMAN 1921-

NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING MEDICAL PHYSICIST

The Second Woman Winner in Medicine

In 1977 Rosalyn S. Yalow became the second woman ever to win the Nobel Prize for medicine. She was honored for her development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), an application of nuclear physics in clinical medicine. Her technique made it possible for scientists to use radio-isotopic tracers to measure the concentration of hundreds of pharmacological and biological substances in the blood and other fluids of the human body. Dr. Yalow first invented the technique in 1959 to measure the amount of insulin in the blood of adult diabetics.

A Woman Pioneer

After World War II the Veterans Administration (VA) began a research program to explore the use of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. One of the hospitals chosen for the nuclear-medicine project was the VA hospital in the Bronx, which hired Dr. Yalow as a consultant in nuclear physics in 1947, two years after she became the second woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois. In collaboration with Dr. Solomon A. Berson, her associate from 1950 until his death in 1972, Dr. Yalow explored the uses of radioactive iodine and developed a revolutionary method of RIA.

Nuclear Medicine

RIA is a laboratory procedure that uses radioisotopes and immunologic methods to measure substances in the blood or other body fluids. In the past these substances had been difficult or impossible to measure, either because they were present in small quantities or because their chemical properties were too similar to those of other substances. Following their groundbreaking work on insulin retention in adult diabetics, Dr. Yalow and Dr. Berson applied RIA to the study of other hormones, and the use of RIA was extended into virtually all medical specialties.

More Recognition

In 1976 Dr. Yalow became the first woman ever to win the Albert Lasker Prize for Basic Medical Research. As only the second woman to win a Nobel Prize for medicine, she called for women to believe in themselves and match their aspirations with "the competence, courage and determination to succeed." Dr. Yalow added in her acceptance speech in Stockholm, "we must feel a personal responsibility to ease the path for those who come after us. The world cannot afford the loss of the talents of half its people if we are to solve the many problems that beset us."