Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

“Everything's a real passion to me - my children, my family, my work, travel. I don't play tennis, I don't play music, but I have a great time.”

“I got an assistantship in physics at the University of Illinois, and I tore up my steno books.”

“I was an early reader, reading even before kindergarten, and since we did not have books in my home, my older brother, Alexander, was responsible for our trip every week to the public library to exchange books already read for new ones to be read.”

“The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination.”

“The only difference between men and women in science is that the women have the babies. This makes it more difficult for women in science but should not be seen as a barrier, for it is merely another challenge to be overcome.”

“I feel it is now my duty to speak to young women, to encourage them to have careers and, particularly, careers in science.”

“If we are to have faith that mankind will survive and thrive on the face of the earth, we must believe that each succeeding generation will be wiser than its progenitors.”

“Perhaps the earliest memories I have are of being a stubborn, determined child. Through the years my mother has told me that it was fortunate that I chose to do acceptable things, for if I had chosen otherwise, no one could have deflected me from my path.”

“Man himself is a mysterious object, and the tools to probe his physiologic nature and function have developed only slowly through the millennia.”

“Some are very hostile if mistakes are pointed out. I'm not. If I make a mistake, I make a mistake.”

“By seventh grade, I was committed to mathematics.”

“My point of view is if you want to move up, examine first yourself.”

“To primitive man, the sky was wonderful, mysterious and awesome, but he could not even dream of what was within the golden disk or silver points of light so far beyond his reach.”

“We bequeath to you, the next generation, our knowledge but also our problems. While we still live, let us join hands, hearts and minds to work together for their solution so that your world will be better than ours and the world of your children even better.”

“There's lots of prejudice, but if you examine yourself, you can make It. Of course, this doesn't make me too popular with some quarters in the women s movement.”

“We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home; that a woman should not aspire to achieve more than her male counterparts and, particularly, not more than her husband.”

“I worked for 22 years with Sol Berson.”

“In the late '30's when I was in college, physics - and in particular, nuclear physics - was the most exciting field in the world.”

“For the past 30 years, I have been committed to the development and application of radioisotopic methodology to analyze the fine structure of biologic systems.”

“The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination. In the past, few women have tried, and even fewer have succeeded.”