McCLINTOCK, Barbara
(1902–92), American geneticist and Nobel laureate,
most noted for her discovery that genes can transfer their positions
on chromosomes, which is important for the understanding of hereditary
processes. She obtained her doctorate in botany from Cornell University
in 1927 and became affiliated with the Carnegie Institution of Washington
in 1941. Her lengthy research into mobile genetic elements was first
published in the 1940s and ’50s, but its significance was
not appreciated until much later. She was awarded the Nobel Prize
for physiology or medicine in 1983 for this achievement.