What’s it like to make an amazing discovery-and then have nobody believe it? Barbara McClintock experienced this. In the 1940’s, she unlocked some of the deepest secrets about genes and DNA. Yet, it took nearly 20 years for her work to be accepted.
Barbara McClintock was one of the first women geneticists. The daughter of a physician, McClintock was born in Connecticut, and educated at Cornell’s College of Agriculture, where she received her PhD in for work in botany. In 1944, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, becoming only the third woman to be so honoured. McClintock then joined the Carnegie Institute’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York., where she stayed on for the rest her life.
In 1983, Barbara won Nobel Prize for her study in genetics. She won the prize in the Physiology and Medicine categories, for her discovery that chromosomes can break off from neighbouring chromosomes, and recombine to create unique genetic combinations. The importance of her research, performed on corn was not recognized for many years. She won the Nobel Prize for this discovery only years later. Her discoveries form the very foundation of much of today’s research in genetic engineering.