Barbara McClintock Facts
Barbara McClintock Facts
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| Interesting Barbara McClintock Facts: |
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| McClintock was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and attended school at Erasmus Hall High School. |
| She was naturally adept at science and wanted to attend Cornell University to pursue a degree in science, but her mother felt that a girl with such an education would have trouble finding a suitable husband. |
| Only a short time before registration, McClintock's physician father intervened and she was allowed to attend. |
| She received a bachelor's degree in botany in 1923, but her interest in genetics was established when she took a course as part of the degree program. |
| At the invitation of her genetics professor , C B Hutchison, McClintock pursued both a Master's and PhD; despite rumors that women were not allowed to earn graduate degrees in genetics from Cornell-hence McClintock's graduate and post-graduate degrees in botany-those rumors appear to have been false. |
| During her research and teaching at Cornell, McClintock organized a group of research who would be vital to the study of genetics in corn. |
| She focused on ways to understand and visual the genetic makeup of the plant for breeding and resistance purposes. |
| One of these methods involved studying the microspore of the plant as opposed to the root tip, which many researchers had focused on. |
| McClintock later became the first scientist to understand and diagram the cross-shaped nature of chromosomes during meiosis, which led to later research proving chromosomal crossover. |
| Among her other continued and vital work, McClintock conducted research into the mutating properties of Xrays and created the first ever genetic map of corn's makeup. |
| She also was the first scientist to fully understand and outline the centromere and its role in genetics. |
| Despite her many important contributions, her numerous honorary degrees and fellowships, and her renown as a cytogenetecist, McClintock often faced sexual discrimination at different universities and faced the frustration of not being recognized for her contributions. |
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