05/05/2026
Hun oppfant radioimmunoassay
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"I was excited about achieving a career in physics. My family, being more practical, thought the most desirable position for me would be as an elementary school teacher. Furthermore, it seemed most unlikely that good graduate schools would accept and offer financial support for a woman in physics. However my physics professors encouraged me and I persisted."
- Rosalyn Yalow in her Nobel Prize biography.
Yalow's interest in science was sparked at the age of 17 when she read a biography of physicist Marie Skłodowska Curie.
Inspired by the first female Nobel Prize laureate, Yalow became a nuclear physicist who revolutionised the medical world by developing the radioimmunoassay. With the help of radioimmunoassay, she proved that type 2 diabetes is caused by the body's inefficient use, rather than lack, of insulin. For this discovery, she was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Yalow never retired and maintained emeritus status at the VA Medical Center in Bronx, New York until her death in 2011, aged 89.
Read her bio: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1977/yalow/biographical/
Photo: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
