Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

Who was Rosalyn Sussman Yalow?

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (July 19, 1921 – May 30, 2011) was an American medical physicist, and a co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally) for development of the radioimmunoassay technique. She was the second woman (after Gerty Cori), and the first American-born woman, to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was born in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of Clara (née Zipper) and Simon Sussman, and was raised in a Jewish household. She went to Walton High School (Bronx), New York City. After high school, she attended the all-female, tuition-free Hunter College, where her mother hoped she would learn to become a teacher.

Yalow knew how to type, and was able to get a part-time position as a secretary to Dr. Rudolf Schoenheimer, a leading biochemist at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Historical significance

She did not believe that any respectable graduate school would admit and financially support a woman, so she took another job as a secretary to Dr. She was the second woman, and the first American-born woman, to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Instead, Yalow decided to study physics.