Tikvah Alper (22 January 1909 – 2 February 1995) trained as a physicist and became a distinguished radiobiologist. Among many other initiatives and discoveries, she was among the first to find evidence indicating that the infectious agent in Scrapie does not contain nucleic acid: a finding that was instrumental in understanding the development of the Prion theory. She was director of the MRC Experimental Radiopathology Unit, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK, 1962–1974. She married Max Sterne but never adopted his name.