Chapter 4, A Career for Women Summary and Analysis

In 1931, McClintock decided it was time to leave Cornell; she simply could not receive a faculty appointment there due to her gender. She won a fellowship, however, and divided her time between the University of Missouri and Caltech, continuing the use Cornell as her home base. Ithaca was something of a second home to her. She collaborated with a variety of scientists during this time and during the 1930s she and others found that X-Rays could be used to study chromosomal structures. McClintock was able to place genes on chromosomes as a result. And she could also identify a process of transposition within the replication of 'ring' chromosomes.

McClintock would also make one of her great discoveries in this time, which began in 1931. She found a small body normally visible at the end...