  |
|
|
|
Barbara McClintock - A Key to Chromosomes Barbara McClintock was born June 16, 1902, in Hartford. Her given name was Eleanor, but the name Barbara stuck. She was one of four children. Her parents were Thomas Henry McClintock, a medical doctor, and Sara Handy McClintock. In 1908, the family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where in 1919, Barbara graduated from Erasmus Hall High School That fall she enrolled at Cornell University, where she stayed to earn three degrees: an undergraduate degree in botany in 1923; a masters degree in botany in 1925; and a Ph.D. in botany in 1927, at the age of 24. Women were not permitted to major in genetics at Cornell at that time. Professor C. B. Hutchison taught the only undergraduate course in genetics, and, in 1922, he invited McClintock to join another class he taught even though it was a graduate class. McClintock believes this was the beginning of her life's work. From 1927 through 1931, McClintock remained at Cornell as an instructor and researcher, working in maize genetics. Her research involved mapping the ten chromosomes of the maize plant. In 1931, she and Harriet Creighton co-published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on genetic crossing-over in maize, demonstrating that genetic material was exchanged by chromosomes. Her work would be verified by molecular biologists in the 1970s. McClintock is considered the founder of the cytogenetics of maize. From 1931 to 1933, her research was funded by a fellowship from the National Research Council. Working with other fellowship grants, she conducted research at Cornell, the University of Missouri at Columbia, and the California Institute of Technology. She was introduced to the X-ray. In 1933, she received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to do research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and the Botanical Institute in Freiburg. She spent six months in Germany. The rumblings of the oncoming war made work impossible, and she returned to Cornell in 1934 as a researcher. In 1936, McClintock accepted as position as an Assistant Professor of Genetics at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where she remained through 1940. She continued working with X-rays and maize. She noted that the X-ray would sometimes damage the chromosome and she mapped the effect on offspring. She recorded that broken chromosomes would heal themselves by re-connecting the broken strings. She also documented how chromosomes would break spontaneously. While at the University, a wedding announcement appeared for a woman with the same name. McClintock was informed by the department chair that he would fire her if she married. Dr. McClintock was Vice President of the Genetics
The copyright of the article Barbara McClintock - The Key to Chromosomes in Biographies of Scientists is owned by . Permission to republish Barbara McClintock - The Key to Chromosomes in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
|
|
|
|
