Barbara Mcclintock

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NEWS AND VIEWS OBITUARY------~ work in the 1950s and 1960s is best Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) exemplified by a comment attributed by Mel Green to the renowned geneticist BARBARA MCCLINTOCK, pioneering ingenious analysis of triploids. In 1931, A. H. Sturtevant. Reporting to a group geneticist and Nobel laureate, died on 2 together with Harriet Creighton, she of interested colleagues at the California September in Huntington, New York, published a landmark experiment show Institute of Technology about her talk after a brief illness. McClintock recent ing that genetic crossing-over was at the 1951 Cold Spring Harbor sympo ly had been feted on her ninetieth associated with the exchange of parts of sium, Sturtevant said, "I didn't under birthday by a gathering of friends at homologous chromosomes. stand one word she said, but if she says Cold Spring Harbor and the prepara These discoveries established her at a it is so, it must be so!". tion of a unique volume in her honour, young age as a talented theoretician and Her papers on transposition in maize The Dynamic Genome: Barbara McClin virtuoso experimentalist, able to per also contained prescient observations on tock's Ideas in the Century of Genetics form cytological studies on organisms hitherto unknown epigenetic phenom (reviewed in Nature of 20 August). that others found intractable - her ena, presaging areas of intense current McClintock was born in Hartford, beautiful photographs of chromosomes interest such as gene imprinting. She thus leaves fertile ground for a whole new generation of geneticists. McCiint()(:k's ideas about a dynamic genome did not become generally understood until the late 1970s, when transposable elements had been dis covered in many organisms and molecu lar techniques were available for isola tion and identification of the DNA seg ments comprising transposons. In 1983, she received the Nobel prize for her discovery of ''mobile genetic elements". By many accounts McClintock was a very private person. All of her experi ments on transposable elements in the 1940s and 1950s were carried out alone at Cold Spring Harbor, where she lived in monk-like austerity. Yet if she was private, she was also very sociable. She was a spirited conversationalist, taking every opportunity for a discussion with younger scientists, who made regular pilgrimages to spend a day with her. Many scientists fondly recall long con versations with her about philosophy, politics and art, as well as science. Children who grew up at Cold Spring Barbara McClintock in 1929, when she was a member of R. A. Emerson's maize genetics group at Cornell. The others (standing, right to left) are Charles Burnham, Marcus Harbor Laboratory remember her as Rhoades and Emerson, with George Beadle squatting. an occasional companion who accompa nied them home from the school bus Connecticut, and raised in Brooklyn, remain as a testimony to her gifts as an stop, discussing what insects did in the New York. She received her BS (1923) artisan as well as a scientist. These winter or the anatomy of walnuts. and PhD (1927) degrees from Cornell achievements were recognized by her At her ninetieth birthday party, University, where she continued to election to the National Academy of McClintock reflected that it had become work as a research associate in R. A. Sciences at the age of 42 and, a year more difficult to get to know the sum Emerson's laboratory together with later, her election as president of the mer visitors to Cold Spring Harbor George Beadle, Marcus Rhoades and Genetics Society of America. because they whisked in for meetings Charles Burnham - the Cornell corn McClintock's work during the 1940s and then, after a few days, drove away. group. Following a brief stint as an firmly established her as a major figure She relished the days when people assistant professor at the University of in the history of genetics. It was then stayed for the whole summer, so that Missouri, she moved to Cold Spring that she initiated studies leading to her she could renew acquaintances or make Harbor in December 1941. For more discovery of transposable elements in new ones. For many scientists McClin than 50 years, she lived and worked at corn. The first evidence for these un tock was a hero, someone who by her the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory stable genetic elements came from un own example helped them find strength under the auspices of the Department of expected results in her continuing in themselves. Her burning curiosity, Genetics of the Carnegie Institution of research on the fate of broken chromo enthusiasm and uncompromising hones Washington. somes. Her discovery of movable gen ty serve as a constant reminder of what McClintock rose quickly to promin etic elements, though documented in the drew us all to science in the first place. ence through a series of remarkable same rigorous style as her earlier work, Gerald R. Fink experiments on her favourite organism, was puzzling to her contemporaries. corn (otherwise maize). In her thesis Yet she was held in such high esteem Gerald R. Fink is at the Whitehead work she assigned linkage groups estab that her findings were accepted and Institute for Biomedical Research, Nine lished by genetic analysis to cytological even codified in genetics textbooks. The Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Mas• ly identifiable chromosomes using an prevailing opinion about McClintock's sachusetts 02142, USA.