Barbara McClintock Quotes

Barbara McClintock, the 1983 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, was an American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927, where she was a leader in the development of maize cytogenetics. McClintock completed her secondary education at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. She graduated early in 1919. During the 1940s and 1950s, McClintock discovered transposition and used it to show how genes are responsible for turning physical characteristics on or off. She developed theories to explain the repression or expression of genetic information from one generation of maize plants to the next. The 2011 novel The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, features a character named Diane Macgregor, whose career, research and Nobel Prize award all reflect McClintock's.