Barbara McClintock.

American Botanical Geneticist 1902-1992

Barbara McClintock, a pioneering botanical geneticist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1983 for her investigations on transposable genetic elements. She was born on June 16, 1902, in Hartford, Connecticut, and with her family soon moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she attended public schools. After graduating high school at age sixteen, McClintock attended the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell, where she excelled in the field of plant genetics and graduated, in 1923, with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Agriculture, having concentrated in plant breeding and botany.

Career at Cornell

Awarded Cornell's graduate scholarship in botany for 1923-24, which supported her during the first year of her graduate studies, McClintock concentrated on cytology, genetics, and zoology. She received her master's degree (A.M.) in 1925 and a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in 1927. Her master's thesis was...