Feature Story: Barbara McClintock 

Yaeli Mejia Lorenzo

Professor  Santonyo Bangali

FIQWS 10111

10/18/24

Women in STEM: Barbara McClintock 

Feature Article by Yaeli Mejia / October 16, 2024 

Early Life 

At the very start, the relationship McClintock had with her Mother was rocky. It had gotten to the point where, to relieve some of her Mom’s stress, Barbara had to go live with her Uncle and Aunt in Massachusetts for a good portion of her life. However, when she started highschool, she returned to live with her parents. She became reserved and “deliberately chose a solitary life without encumbrances” (“Barbara McClintock – Biographical – NobelPrize.org”). Despite this, Barbara’s parents were generally supportive of her. When Barbara expressed an interest in skating as a child, they bought her skating gear and allowed her to skip school to skate if the weather was right. 

As Barbara got older, she developed a passion for science. Her teachers described her as “exceptionally clever,” (“Barbara McClintock – Biography, Facts and Pictures”) and were often encouraging her to pursue a career as a college professor. Barbara’s Mother did not like this idea and expressed concern for Barbara, urging her not to become a college professor because they were “creatures that didn’t belong to society and had a difficult life.” (Fedoroff, 269). By the age of 17, Barbara was determined to enroll at Cornell University, but her family struggled with money, and her Mother was strongly against Barbara going to college altogether because “it made them (women) unmarriageable,” (Fedoroff, 269) which was a common belief at the time. Barbara persisted, however, taking on a job and reading books at her local library determined to keep learning, and just a few days before the semester began her Father, who was able to rack up enough money to cover her tuition, allowed her to study at Cornell. 

          As Barbara got older, she developed a passion for science. Her teachers described her as “exceptionally clever,” (“Barbara McClintock – Biography, Facts and Pictures”) and were often encouraging her to pursue a career as a college professor. Barbara’s Mother did not like this idea and expressed concern for Barbara, urging her not to become a college professor because they were “creatures that didn’t belong to society and had a difficult life.” (Fedoroff, 269)

. 

By the age of 17, Barbara was determined to enroll at Cornell University, but her family struggled with money, and her Mother was strongly against Barbara going to college altogether because “it made them (women) unmarriageable,” (Fedoroff, 269) which was a common belief at the time. Barbara persisted, however, taking on a job and reading books at her local library determined to keep learning, and just a few days before the semester began her Father, who was able to rack up enough money to cover her tuition, allowed her to  study at Cornell.                                                                                                       

Education 

When she enrolled as a biology major in Cornell, Barbara’s personality did a complete 180. She became “more relaxed, and enjoyed her time as an undergraduate,” (“Barbara McClintock – Biography, Facts and Pictures”). This flip in personality was hugely thanks to Barbara leaving her home life with her Mom. From there, she became more social and interested in music, joining a jazz band and even becoming the president of the women’s freshmen class. However, she was still somewhat reserved, rejecting invites from formal organizations like sororities. 

In 1921, she became particularly captivated by a course she took in genetics. After her professor, Claude Hutcherson, a plant breeder and geneticist, noticed how passionate Barbara was about genetics, he invited her to take a graduate course in genetics and from then on, she fell in love with the subject. “His invitation was accepted with pleasure and great anticipations. Obviously, this telephone call cast the die for my future. I remained with genetics thereafter.” (“Barbara McClintock – Biography, Facts and Pictures”). After graduating with a B.S. in 1923, McClintock continued to pursue genetics, and while Cornell had an amazing group of geneticists, genetics was only taught in the plant-breeding department, which did not allow female graduates. Barbara was determined though, deciding to register with the plant department, majoring in cytology, and minoring in genetics and zoology. From there, McClintock received her M.S. in botany in 1925, and a Ph.D. in botany in 1927, both earned at Cornell. Both of these degrees involved study of plant genetics, which would be McClintock’s main focus for the rest of her life.

Sometime after graduating and being appointed an instructor, she created a group that studied cytogenetics in maize, which consisted of Professor R.A. Emerson, George Beadle, Marcus Rhoades (most of whom were seasoned geneticists) and a handful of student graduates. It wasn’t until 1929 that Harriet Craighton, another geneticist and botanist, joined their group and started helping McClintock with her research. 

In 1931, McClintock published a paper with Harriet Craighton on the link between chromosomal crossover during meiosis, this being McClintock’s first important contribution to the field of science, however not her last, as, throughout the years, McClintock would publish more articles and continue to make more important discoveries, receiving more attention from the public than ever before but still having no permanent position at Cornell. “Cornell was hospitable to women students, but it had no women professors in fields other than home economics.” (Fedoroff, 271). 

In 1933, Barbara received the Guggenheim Fellowship to go to Germany for six months from 1933 to 1934, Barbara happily accepted, but was not prepared for Nazism in Germany and decided to return to Cornell earlier than expected. When she returned, she found that the university would not hire a woman professor. However, she still remained with Cornell, her research being funded by the Rockefeller Foundation grant for two years, realizing that it was going to get harder for her to land a job at any educational facility as a women and even harder to get help from her fellow scientists, “McClintock was discouraged and resentful of the disparity between her prospects and those of her male counterparts…the fact remained that few positions commensurate with her accomplishments were open to women.” (Fedoroff, 271). She had quickly realized she was going to have to fight for a place in the genetics field and after trying every available resource, her luck turned in 1936, when a former employer, Lewis Stadler, was able to get her a position as an assistant professor in the University of Michigan, which she quickly and happily accepted. 

University of Michigan 

She continued her research in the University of Michigan, focusing on the effects that X-rays had on maize chromosomes. She continued to build her reputation, eventually going on to become the vice president of the Genetics Society of America in 1939 and then president of the genetics society in    1944. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Aug. 2024).

Even with her new positions, she still remained at a low level position in the University of Michigan. “In September 1940, McClintock wrote to Charles Burnham, ‘I have decided that I must look for another job. As far as I can make out, there is nothing more for me here. I am an assistant professor at $3,000 and I feel sure that that is the limit for me.’” (“Breakage-Fusion-Bridge: The University of Missouri, 1936-1941”). 

She quickly realized that she wouldn’t have the chance to advance, meetings were being held behind her back, and that her job hung by a thread, dependent on her connection with Lewis Stadler and the moment he considered going somewhere else, which he was considering, she was likely to lose her job. She made the decision to take a leave of absence, never really intending to come back, in hopes of finding a better job where she felt less limited. After some time, McClintock finally found work at the Cold Spring Harbor through Mililas Deverick, a member of the genetics department at the Cold Spring Harbor constitution, who formally invited her and offered her a research appointment. McClintock was hesitant at first, but accepted. 

Cold Spring Harbor and Discoveries 

During her time at the Cold Spring Harbor, McClintock made the discovery of “jumping genes” or transposons. This was by far her biggest discovery and most significant contribution to science. It proved that an organism’s genome is not a stationary entity, but that it could change and rearrange. McClintock’s discovery was met with extreme skepticism from fellow geneticists and from fellow scientists in general, given the fact that there was an abundance of evidence that suggested otherwise, “…the evidence that genes maintain their positions relative to each other was overwhelming: the concept that genetic elements can move would undoubtedly have met with resistance regardless of author and presentation.” (Fedoroff, 274). McClintock found it  hard to explain her discovery in terms that were simpler and other people could understand. Explaining was not her strong suit and over time, people began to ignore her ideas. However, McClintock continued to believe in her theory, doing countless research and publishing multiple papers on the idea.

 

Recognition and Awards

It wasn’t until 20 years later that her study on transposons resurfaced in the 1960s, when French geneticist François Jacob explained the concept of genetic regulation for the lactose operon, which is a concept that McClintock had also shown in 1951. At this point, McClintock’s discovery became recognized worldwide, “She received the Kimber Genetics Award in 1967, the National Medal of Science in 1970, and the Lewis S. Rosensteil Award and the Louis and Bert Freedman Foundation Award in 1978.” (Federoff, 276). 

Finally, in 1983, and more than 30 years after her initial paper on transportation, she was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, becoming the first woman to win the prize unshared, and the first American woman to ever win the prize unshared in science. (Federoff, 276). McClintock quickly gathered attention from paparazzi. However, she remained unphased, wanting only her privacy respected by news reporters coming up to her in public. Barbara stayed true to herself and continued her research while attending lectures, even with her newfound fame in the scientific world. “Barbara deliberately chose a solitary life without encumbrances, but she did not reject womanhood. In a feminine way, she once said to me ‘I cannot fight for myself, but I can fight for others.’” (“Barbara McClintock – Biographical – NobelPrize.org”).

References

“Barbara McClintock – Biographical – NobelPrize.org.” Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1983/mcclintock/biographical/. Accessed 18 October 2024.

“Barbara McClintock – Biography, Facts and Pictures.” Famous Scientists, 11 December 2015, https://www.famousscientists.org/barbara-mcclintock/. Accessed 18 October 2024.

Fedoroff, Nina V. “Barbara McClintock. 16 June 1902-2 September 1992.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 40, 1994, pp. 267–80. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/770309. Accessed 18 Oct. 2024.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Barbara McClintock”. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Aug. 2024), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Barbara-McClintock. Accessed 18 October 2024.

“Breakage-Fusion-Bridge: The University of Missouri, 1936-1941.” Barbara McClintock – Profiles in Science, 12 Mar. 2019, profiles.nlm.nih.gov/spotlight/ll/feature/missouri. Accessed 18 Oct. 2024.

‌