Rosalyn Yalow — Mothers in Science

Rosalyn Yalow did not believe in “balancing her career with her home life” and instead incorporated her home life wherever she could in her work life.

Rosalyn Yalow (1921-2011) was an American medical physicist and a co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of the radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method to measure minute biological compounds (antigens) that trigger the immune system to produce antibodies. RIA revolutionised the study of hormones and the treatment of hormonal diseases like diabetes, and is still widely used nowadays in scientific research and medical diagnosis.

In college, Yalow became fascinated with physics but her family wanted her to become an elementary school teacher. At the time it was also highly unlikely that good graduate schools would accept and offer financial support to a woman, especially in physics. Nevertheless, Yalow persisted with her efforts to study physics and, with the support and encouragement from her physics professors, she was finally accepted at the engineering graduate school of the University of Illinois.

The journey of her graduate school life wasn’t easy. She had to juggle coursework in physics and part-time teaching, both of which were new to Yalow. Even when she received an A- in the laboratory course, the Chairman of the Physics Department remarked, “That A- confirms that women do not do well at laboratory work.” But this only spurred her to work harder!

Yalow was also juggling research work and motherhood during the early years of her career. The young mother went back to her laboratory a week after the birth of her son, bringing her baby along. She continued her lab work while nursing and caring for her baby, managing it all on very little sleep. With the birth of her second child, Yalow did exactly the same - she always tried to be present for her children. She continued to work hard in the lab- clocking up to 60-80 hours per week, while managing to keep up with her family duties.

Because Yalow was confident and ambitious, she was often called ‘abrasive’ or ‘aggressive’, but she didn’t care. For years, she had to face criticism at work, including from women, but she never quit nor turned her back on other young women, especially if she believed they had the potential to become scientists. She said that as far as she was concerned “There was something wrong with the discriminators, not something wrong with me”.

Yalow was known to encourage high school girls to pursue scientific careers. Retired in 1992, she became the Senior Medical Investigator Emerita at the hospital, and continued to regularly visit the lab several times a week.