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Biography of Barbara McClintockName: Barbara McClintockBirth Date: June 16, 1902 Death Date: September 2, 1992 Place of Birth: Hartford, Connecticut, United States Nationality: American Gender: Female Occupations: geneticist Barbara McClintock Geneticist Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) received the Nobel Prize in Physiology for her discovery that genes could move from place to place on a chromosome.Barbara McClintock was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on June 16, 1902. She had two older sisters and gained a brother when she was two. Her father, Thomas Henry McClintock, was a physician. Upon the birth of their son, the McClintocks sent Barbara off to live with relatives in the country, where she lived on and off until she was of school age. It was here that she developed the deep love of nature that lasted her lifetime. In 1908, the family moved to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn where her father had taken a job with Standard Oil. McClintock rejoined the family and attended the local school. Her love of nature, however, persisted.After graduating from Erasmus High School in 1918, she took a job rather than go on to college, …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…perspective she used throughout her career. Although the basics of her experimental work were not only accepted but honored, some of her larger hypotheses were yet to find an audience.McClintock spent the remainder of her life studying transposition at Cold Spring Harbor. She died on September 2, 1992 shortly after her friends had celebrated her ninetieth birthday. In her obituary, Gerald R. Finks notes that her "burning curiosity, enthusiasm and uncompromising honesty serve as a constant reminder of what drew us all to science in the first place." In 1996 Cold Spring Harbor's DNA Learning Center held an exhibit in her honor featuring a replica of her original 1942 laboratory. Further Reading A good short sketch of McClintock's life and work may be found in Science, 222 (October 28, 1983). A full-length biography is Evelyn Fox Keller, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (1983). Also see Long Island Business News, October 21, 1996. |