Women in Science

Barbara McClintock

Scientist

Barbara McClintock (b. 1902) discovered her life's path of genetic research while a student at Cornell University in the 1920s. Thereafter she spent many years researching the maize plant for nature's most recondite mysteries of inheritance. When the scientific would caught up with her sufficiently to award her the 1983 Nobel Prize in medicine, she spoke of her career as "so much pleasure over the years, asking the maize plant to solve specific problems and then watching its responses." McClintock's most ground-breaking discovery was the phenomenom of mobile genetic elements in maize, which she investigated via changes in function and organization that occur when genes move from place to place on a chromosome. This work, for years overshadowed by molecular biology and the path to NDA structure, has proven to have much significance across a wide spectrum, from oncology to new theories of evolution.

Be sure to read about how other female, African-American and other scientists helped shape our history and make our world what it is today.