Barbara McClintock

Barbara McClintock (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.