Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel Laureate: Her Life and Work in Medicine - A Biographical Memoir - Hardcover

Straus, Eugene

9780306457968: Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel Laureate: Her Life and Work in Medicine - A Biographical Memoir

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0306457962 ISBN 13: 9780306457968

Publisher: Perseus Books, 1998

This authorized biography of Rosalyn Yalow is the life story of one of the few Nobel Prize-winning women in science. An outspoken woman and a complex hero in an age of superficial celebrity worship, this is the complete tale of her remarkable rise from child of uneducated immigrant parents to shining star in a male-dominated profession and world. As this story unfolds - as told by a respected physician who was her scientific colleague and friend - we learn of a young girl who against all odds grew up into one of the most venerated women in science. Her life story is related intermittently against the backdrop of her later years, when, after having won the Nobel Prize and suddenly felled by a stroke, she was brought to a hospital where, soiled with blood and unrecognized, she was "dumped" as a charity case onto another hospital. From a long line of strong women, Rosalyn emerged from being the daughter of immigrant parents struggling to make ends meet, to the young, determined woman who made it her destiny to break all barriers. Young and energetic, she broke into the sciences as a lone female graduate student in physics, outshining her male classmates. She refused to accept a conventional career as a physics teacher, and instead pioneered in the new field of nuclear medicine. Along with Solomon Berson - her brilliant and charismatic partner - she created a mom and pop scientific laboratory that rivaled and surpassed the giants in bringing new understanding to diagnosing human disease. Did breaking the gender barrier in building a world class laboratory and struggling to make a great discovery take its toll on her personal life? Straus investigates that question through first-handinterviews with Yalow, and her family, friends, and colleagues, not glossing over her complex relationship with her daughter nor the suicide of her much overshadowed brother.

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From the Author:

Women have a hard time in medical and scientific careers.
Rosalyn Yalow was only the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in medicine. Her life and career have been shaped by the powerful obstacles that women face in developing careers at the top of their fields. The ways in which she dealt with these obstacles were unique, interesting, and tragic. Men feared her, women disliked her, feminists distrusted her. She is among the most complex figures of our time. I was a witness and a participant in her struggles. I wrote this book so that men and women might consider how gender bias and other inequalities continue to thwart talented individuals. Big time science is still very much a man's world. From Yalow's story we can learn about our American values, about our scientific establishment, and about our own ambitious impulses. If we fail to learn from trailblazers like Yalow then we all have a harder way to go. Here is the story of an alpha female, someone who could lead the pack, even if it was all men.

About the Author:

Eugene Straus, M.D., is professor of medicine and chief of digestive diseases at the State University of New York Health Science centre at Brooklyn. He was co-chairman with Rosalyn Yalow of the Department of Clinical Sciences at Montefiore Medical centre. He lives in New York City.

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