Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was born in the Bronx in 1921. She attended Huntes College and graduated with honors and degrees
in chemistry and physics. She overcame great odds and discrimination by being the only woman among four hundred men at
the University of Illinois College of Engineering Physics Department. She got her Ph.D. in nuclear physics. Beginning
in 1950, she worked at the Bronx Veterans' Hospital laboratory with Dr. Sol Bernson. They discovered how to measure small
amounts of hormones in the human body by using radioisotopes. The method is called RIA and it is vital to determining
the amount of foreign material in the blood. Substances with 
radioisotopes and antibodies
are injected into the bloodstream.
Rosalyn became the first woman to receive the Albert Laster Award in 1976. She became the second woman to receive the
Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1977.
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