Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Quotes

Infectious diseases have become less prominent as causes of death and disability in regions of improved sanitation and adequate supplies of antibiotics.

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

In the late ’30’s when I was in college, physics – and in particular, nuclear physics – was the most exciting field in the world.

They told me that, as a woman, I’d never get into graduate school in physics, so they got me a job as a secretary at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and promised that, if I were a good girl, I would take courses there.

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

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.

I have long felt that the trouble with discrimination is not discrimination per se, but rather that the people who are discriminated against think of themselves as second-class.

In the past, few women have tried and even fewer have succeeded.

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.

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.

New truths become evident when new tools become available.

All women scientists should marry, rear children, cook, and clean in order to achieve fulfillment, to be a complete woman.

I worked for 22 years with Sol Berson.

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.

We must believe in ourselves or no one will believe in us.

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

By seventh grade, I was committed to mathematics.

My crystal ball or intuition tells me that in the ’80s the impact of RIA [radioimmunoassay] on the study of infectious diseases may prove as revolutionary as its impact on endocrinology in the 60s.

There is at present in the United States a powerful activist movement that is anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-technology. If we are to have faith that mankind will survive and thrive on the face of the Earth, we must depend on the continued revolutions brought about by science.

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.

The Nobel Prize gives you an opportunity to make a fool of yourself in public.

I wasn’t handed college or graduate school or anything else on a silver platter. I had to work very hard, but I did it because I wanted to. That’s the real key to happiness. I think unhappy people are those who feel that circumstances are forcing them into a pattern. Happy people are not slaves to the system.

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

We must believe in ourselves as no one else will believe in us, we must match our expectations with the competence, courage and determination to succeed.

The world cannot afford to lose the talents of half it’s people if we are to solve the many problems that beset us.

The first telescope opened the heavens; the first microscope opened the world of the microbes; radioisotopic methodology, as exemplified by RIA, has shown the potential for opening new vistas in science and medicine.

As long as you’re learning you’re not old.

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

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.

The war gave women like her opportunities, not a feminist movement, and if the opportunities dwindled after the war, she feels that it was because women didn’t want them.

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.