[Development of radioimmunoassay and its consequences in the medical research. A tribute to Rosalyn Yallow]

Abstract

Rosalyn Yalow lived all her life in the Bronx, New York, where she was born, educated, worked and met Solomon Berson, her scientific partner for a long time. Despite being a top student at Hunter College she was unable to be admitted to any graduate program in physics, mainly because she was Jewish and female. Later she joined the Veterans Administration Hospital in New York where she established the radioisotope laboratory. There she met Solomon Berson and formed the extraordinary scientific partnership and started publishing studies of radioactivity. Yalow received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Phisiology or Medicine in 1977 and died on May 30, 2011.