Barbara McClintock

Barbara McClintock

Created By: Alina Abraham

Biography

Contrary to a popular belief of getting married, Barbara's passion of education got the better of her and she went to Cornell University in 1918 to study agriculture. She recieved a Ph.D in botany. Her succesful experiments and vast knowledge allowed her to earn a Noble Prize for Physiology or Medicine. She also recieved support by the National Research Council and Rockefeller Foundation.

Research

The research was conducted in the 1920s to about 1949. Barbara was indulged in plant genetics and wanted to see what the mechanism for transposition in corn. After studying the chromosomes of the corn plant, Barbara learned of translocations, inversions, deletions and ring chromosome in the corn. This led to the deciphering of transposition in corn in Cold Spring Harbor, This is such a significant discovery because transposition proved the exchange of genes between the chromosomes.This was the first genetic instability to be found. She also aided in the development of the study of cytogenetics, which was the study of chromosomes.