Live fact check

The book says

Gerty Cori became "only the third woman ever" to win a Nobel, "after Marie Curie and her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie."

The record shows

She was the third woman to win a science Nobel. By 1947 women had already won the Nobel Prize in Literature (Lagerlöf, Deledda, Undset, Buck, Mistral) and the Peace Prize (von Suttner, Addams, Balch). The name is Irène, with an accent.

Sources

• Nobel Prize awarded women (NobelPrize.org)

Confirmed · still in the printed text

The book says

Hired in 1931 as a research associate, "a subordinate title she would hold for sixteen years."

The record shows

She held that first title for twelve years. Washington University made her an associate professor in 1943 (some accounts say 1944) and a full professor in July 1947. The book's later line, "sixteen years of subordinate titles" before the full professorship, is correct.

Sources

• Gerty T. Cori biography, Becker Medical Library, Washington University

Confirmed · still in the printed text

The book says

"The full isolation came at UT Southwestern, where he moved in 1981," where Gilman's lab "purified Gs … and resolved its three subunits."

The record shows

Gs was purified at the University of Virginia. Northup, Sternweis, Smigel, Schleifer, Ross and Gilman reported it from rabbit liver membranes in PNAS in November 1980, before Gilman moved to Dallas in 1981. Emanuel Hanski purified it from turkey erythrocytes in 1981. The subunits, including a small gamma subunit that went unnoticed in the first preparations, were resolved after the move to UT Southwestern.

Sources

• Northup et al., PNAS 77:6516 (1980)
• Gilman, Nobel lecture (1994)
• Gilman, Nobel biographical

Confirmed · still in the printed text

The book says

Rose and Hershko met "over coffee" at "a Fogarty Foundation conference" in 1976, after which the reticulocyte fractionation that turned up APF-1 is placed at Fox Chase in Philadelphia.

The record shows

The fractionation began in Hershko's laboratory at the Technion in Haifa and was published from there in 1978 (Ciechanover, Hod and Hershko; Rose was not an author). Hershko continued it during a 1977-78 sabbatical in Rose's lab. The covalent tag was discovered at Fox Chase with Rose in the summer of 1979. In Hershko's own account the two men met at the breakfast table at a Fogarty meeting at the National Institutes of Health.

Sources

• Hershko, Nobel lecture (2004), pp. 190 and 198
• Hershko, Nobel biographical
• Ciechanover, Hod & Hershko, BBRC 81:1100 (1978)

Confirmed · still in the printed text

The book says

She worked "checking the acidity of pickles and the color of mayonnaise for a food company," and "paid her own way" to a master's degree at NYU while teaching.

The record shows

In her own account she "did analytical quality control work for a major food company." We have no first-person source for the pickles and mayonnaise. That job came after she finished her master's degree in 1941, and she entered graduate school in 1939 "with help from my parents."

Sources

• Elion, Nobel biographical

Confirmed · still in the printed text

The book says

Yalow kept working, "later hanging the rejection letter where students and colleagues can see it."

The record shows

No source we found says she hung the letter up. She did reproduce it in her 1977 Nobel lecture: the Journal of Clinical Investigation's rejection, dated September 29, 1955, printed as Figure 3.

Sources

• Yalow, Nobel lecture (1977), Fig. 3

Confirmed · still in the printed text

The book says

He tried to name the compound "ignose," "from the Latin ignosco, for 'I don't know,'" and "the buttoned-up editors" of the Biochemical Journal rejected it.

The record shows

This is his own gloss. In his 1963 memoir he wrote that "ignosco" meant "don't know" and "ose" meant sugar. The Latin is his slip, though: ignosco means "I pardon." The objection came from one editor, Arthur Harden.

Sources

• Szent-Györgyi, "Lost in the Twentieth Century," Annu Rev Biochem 32 (1963)

Confirmed · still in the printed text