[en] Proinsulin, the biosynthetic precursor of insulin, was discovered by Steiner et al. (1967) and shown to be converted to insulin and C-peptide in the β-cell. The first part of this paper deals with aspects of the radioimmunoassay for C-peptide with special emphasis on the development and the sources of errors encountered in our laboratory (Heding, 1975; Naithani et al., 1975). The second part deals with the many problems involved in the determination of human proinsulin and describes a direct and specific radioimmunoassay developed for measuring proinsulin in serum with a detection limit of less than 0.01 pmol/ml. (Auth.)