Barbara McClintock

Even as a child, Barbara McClintock knew she was different from the other girls. She had no interest in dolls or tea parties. In high school she discovered science and went on to earn a Ph.D. in botany at Cornell University at a time when science was not considered a field for women. For years McClintock worked in obscurity, though her experiments with maize, Indian corn, would help lay the foundation for modern genetics. At last, McClintock took the spotlight as she was honored with...
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Even as a child, Barbara McClintock knew she was different from the other girls. She had no interest in dolls or tea parties. In high school she discovered science and went on to earn a Ph.D. in botany at Cornell University at a time when science was not considered a field for women. For years McClintock worked in obscurity, though her experiments with maize, Indian corn, would help lay the foundation for modern genetics. At last, McClintock took the spotlight as she was honored with the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. By studying the traits of several generations of corn kernels, McClintock had discovered jumping genes, the fact that genes can change their positions on the chromosomes of cells. Author Edith Hope Fine paints a fascinating portrait of a woman who harnessed her dreams and her intellect to challenge the world's understanding of heredity.