Rosalyn Yalow won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for radioimmunoassay (RIA) — a method she co-developed to measure vanishingly small amounts of hormones and other substances in the blood using radioactive tracers.
Before RIA, such tiny concentrations were simply invisible to medicine. Her technique made it possible to track insulin, thyroid hormones and countless other markers with precision, transforming both diagnosis and research. Notably, she and her collaborator declined to patent it, so it spread freely.
A physicist by training, Yalow was only the second woman to win the Nobel in medicine — and a determined advocate for women in science throughout her career.
Why it matters: Radioimmunoassay let doctors measure the previously unmeasurable, reshaping diagnostics for hormones, diseases and drugs across all of medicine.
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