Rosalyn Yalow

Co-developed radioimmunoassay, a technique for measuring minute biological substances, and refused to patent it, stating "patents are about keeping things away from people for the purpose of making money."

Became the first female physics graduate student at the University of Illinois in nearly 40 years, and later the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for a technique whose foundational paper had initially been rejected by both Science and the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

After graduate physics programs rejected her with the stated reasoning "She is from New York. She is Jewish. She is a woman," enrolled in stenography courses and took secretarial work at Columbia specifically to stay near research until a graduate position opened at the University of Illinois.

Responding to this documented rejection with a concrete workaround, rather than accepting it, is part of the basis for the profile's persistence score. Persistence

Declined the 1978 Ladies' Home Journal Woman of the Year award, writing to the editor that sex-restricted awards are "inconsistent and unwise."

Publicly declining a form of recognition many would have simply accepted, over a stated principle, is part of the basis for the profile's independent_thinking score. Independent Thinking