© 2024 Corcept Therapeutics, Incorporated
To mark Women’s History Month, we honor the trailblazing work of Rosalyn Yalow, Ph.D., a pre-eminent medical physicist who overcame gender bias in her field to revolutionize endocrinology with the co-discovery of the radioimmunoassay (RIA) with her longtime colleague, Dr. Solomon Berson. The RIA method paved the way for major advances in diabetes research, medical diagnostics and the treatment of hormonal and fertility problems. For this achievement, Dr. Yalow became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1977.
Early Career
Dr. Yalow was born in the South Bronx in 1921 – fittingly, the same year as the discovery of insulin. At the age of 19, she graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College, becoming the college’s first-ever physics major. However, few graduate programs in physics would consider women for admission – that is, until World War II when the draft opened more academic doors for them. During the war, Yalow was able to land a teaching assistantship at the University of Illinois, where she became the first woman to join the school’s engineering faculty in 24 years.
In 1945, Dr. Yalow received her doctorate in nuclear physics from University of Illinois. Research positions were still difficult to find for female physicists, so she returned to Hunter College to teach. During this time, she also decided to volunteer at a Columbia University medical lab, where she was introduced to the new field of radiotherapy.
Eventually, Dr. Yalow found part-time work as a researcher at the Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital, where she met Dr. Berson and began their 22-year collaboration. Together, the pair discovered insulin antibodies – a key precursor to RIA. Scientific journals initially refused to publish their seminal finding because it challenged conventional wisdom about the human immune system. Dr. Yalow would later include one of the rejection letters as an exhibit during her Nobel Prize lecture.
A Legacy of Discovery
The radioimmunoassay that made her a Nobel laureate was Dr. Yalow’s most consequential co-discovery, but many more sprang from it. The RIA technique used radioactive material to find and quantify miniscule amounts of previously undetectable biological substances in the human body. The ability to accurately measure concentrations of chemical compounds in the body is critical to diagnosing disease and calibrating a medicine’s efficacy. Prior to the RIA, many hormones couldn’t be detected or quantified, limiting scientific understanding of disease.
Dr. Yalow made other discoveries with Dr. Berson and researchers in her Bronx VA Hospital lab. They refined the technique for determining blood volume in the body, helping physicians detect heart failure and kidney disease. They proved that people with Type 2 diabetes produced more insulin than non-diabetics. And they first discovered the presence of the hepatitis B virus, paving the way for blood banks to screen blood donations for the virus.
Breaking the Glass Ceiling
Dr. Yalow’s achievements came despite her era’s prevalent sexism and her male-dominated field’s skepticism of women’s scientific acumen and potential. She nonetheless persisted, converting a janitor’s closet at that Bronx VA hospital into her laboratory – an unlikely venue for one of the century’s most consequential scientific discoveries. Dr. Yalow earned many prestigious honors for her vast scientific achievement, including the National Medal of Science and the Lasker Prize for Basic Medical Research. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978 and was later inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993. The year she won her Nobel Prize, Dr. Yalow also became the first woman president of the Endocrine Society, paving the way for many others to follow in that role.
In Stockholm, during her speech at the Nobel Prize banquet back in 1977, Dr. Yalow stated, “We cannot expect in the immediate future that all women who seek it will achieve full equality of opportunity. But if women are to start moving towards that goal, we must believe in ourselves or no one else will believe in us. We must match our aspirations with the competence, courage, and determination to succeed. And we must feel a personal responsibility to ease the path for those who come afterwards. The world cannot afford the loss of the talents of half its people if we are to solve the many problems which beset us.”
We are proud to honor Dr. Yalow’s many significant contributions to science and her trailblazing efforts for women.
Sources:
New York Times, Rosalyn S. Yalow, Nobel Medical Physicist, Dies at 89 https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/us/02yalow.html
Endocrine News, A Determination to Succeed: The Remarkable Life and Career of Rosalyn Yalow, PhD
https://endocrinenews.endocrine.org/a-determination-to-succeed-the-remarkable-life-and-career-of-rosalyn-yalow-phd/
Lasker Foundation: A “Woman of Firsts” Who Transformed Medical Testing
https://laskerfoundation.org/a-woman-of-firsts/