Barbara McClintock, 1902-1992

✍ Scribed by James A. Shapiro

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 234 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0265-9247
• DOI: 10.1002/bies.950141113

✦ Synopsis

Barbara hlcclintock died peacefully. Just two and one-half months earlier, shc had celebrated her 90th birthday at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with a group of friends and colleagues who had contributed to a festschriFt in her honor (l).

McClintock was one of the outstanding figures in modern science. Her 69 year career was an integral part of the genetic revolution that is still transforming our understanding of life.

From her student days at Cornell University (BS 1923, PhD 1927), where she joined Emerson's group as it was pioneering tnaize cytogenetics, to hcr last years at Cold Spring H xbor, where she became a revered source of wisdom about all aspects of biology, McClintock continually directed others towards new intellectual frontiers. Following six years of postdoctoral work at Cornell and an eye-opening fellowship in Berlin, she took an assistant professorship in 1936 at the University of Missouri where she could analyze Stadler's Xirradiated maize stocks. Frustrated by the treatment she