Barbara McClintock was born Eleanor McClintock on June 16, 1902, in Hartford, Connecticut, the third of four children born to homeopathic physician Thomas Henry McClintock and Sara Handy McClintock. Thomas McClintock … See more

McClintock began her studies at Cornell's College of Agriculture in 1919. There, she participated in student government and was invited to join a sorority, though she soon realized that she … See more

After her year-long temporary appointment, McClintock accepted a full-time research position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. … See more

McClintock spent her later years, post Nobel Prize, as a key leader and researcher in the field at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York. McClintock died of natural causes in Huntington, New York, on September 2, 1992, at the age of … See more

During her time at Missouri, McClintock expanded her research on the effect of X-rays on maize cytogenetics. McClintock observed the breakage and fusion of chromosomes in irradiated maize cells. She was also able to show that, in some plants, spontaneous … See more

In 1947, McClintock received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959. In 1967, McClintock was awarded the Kimber Genetics Award; … See more

In 2001, McClintock was the subject of a biography by the science historian Nathaniel C. Comfort's The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock's Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control. Comfort's biography contests the claim that McClintock was … See more