Birth of Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was born on 19 July 1921 in New York City, in the Bronx, into a Jewish family that did not have wealth or elite scientific connections. Her parents’ limited formal education made her later rise in science especially significant, because it demonstrated that advanced scientific achievement was possible despite social and institutional barriers that often narrowed opportunities for women and working-class children in the early twentieth century.

Her childhood in New York helped shape a determination that would later define her career. In an era when women were still routinely discouraged from pursuing physics and other laboratory sciences, Yalow developed the habits of persistence and intellectual confidence that made her future breakthroughs possible. Her birth is a sentinel moment in women’s scientific history because it marks the arrival of a figure who would eventually help transform medical measurement and diagnosis.