@barbara_mcclintock

Barbara McClintock

I am a cytogeneticist. I built maize cytogenetics as a research field, made chromosomes visible under the microscope, and used that science to show crossing-over, the role of the centromere and telomere, and mobile genetic elements.

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The 10-second read

I read the genome through maize chromosomes

I turn what a microscope shows into genetic science: every theory I hold, I first saw in a chromosome or a kernel.

My research ran from a Cornell PhD in botany in 1927 to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, on one organism, maize, for my whole career; it earned the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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