Strong & Powerful Women: Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock was born in 1902, June 16th, in Hartford Connecticut. Her father Thomas Henry McClintock was a family doctor/physician and her mother Sara Handy McClintock was not only a housewife but also was a poet and an artist. Barbara had two sisters Mignon and Marjorie McClintock and a younger brother Malcolm Rider McClintock.
Barbara attended Erasmus Hall High School. Growing up, she was a very intelligent young lady, and loved science so she decided that she wanted to further her education. Her mother on the other hand wasn't very fond of this idea and despite her mother's objections, she enrolled in Cornell University's College of Agriculture in Ithaca, New York. She eventually earned her PhD.It was there where she realised her interest in genetics.
While in college was became very busy because she was obviously studying but she also joined a jazz band and became president of the women's freshman class. In 1921, she took her first genetics course, where she studied the chromosomes of maize and in 1927 she earned her PhD in Botany.
She was later appointed as the instructor in the Botany department where she specialized in cytogenetics, particularly the study of chromosomes in corn. But besides working on her own research, she was guiding a graduate student by the name of Harriet B Creighton. The two of them began researching the behaviour of chromosomes and Barbara developed an improved staining technique that made her able to view chromosomes better than anyone had ever seen before. These techniques proved the existence of chromosomal crossover. Because of these techniques, Barbara was able to discover transposition, which is where certain sections of maize chromosomes detach and move to other chromosomes as part of a regulation mechanism. Together they ended up publishing a paper titled A Correlation of Cytological and Genetical Crossing-over in Zea mays', which explained their work.
Being the very intelligent and amazing woman she was, Barbara McClintock produced the first genetic map for maize, she discovered transposition and used that information to explain how genes are responsible for turning physical characteristics on or off, and did her research on the colouring patterns of maize. Her work has had an enormous an effect on genetic engineering and cancer research. & for her extraordinary work, she got many well deserved awards.
Awards:
- MacArthur Fellowship- Molecular Biology And Genetics
- National Medal of Science
- Wolf Prize in Medicine
- Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal
- Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (which was a first for a woman)
- Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
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