Barbara McClintock

 

When she won Nobel Prize in 1983, I was still an elementary school girl in China. Throughout my middle-school and high-school years, her personal story fascinated me. My interest in botany also started at that time. I collect plants and made samples, which covered the walls of my bedroom. I eventually chose genetics as my major in graduate school. 


In 1953, mainstream science did not accept McClintock's Nobel-winning discovery of transposon elements in maize. She stopped publishing articles about this discovery and switched to studying the race of maize. Throughout the following decades, she traveled to central and south America to identify and grow new corn species. Fortunately, French scientists rediscovered transposon elements in bacteria in the 1960s. Barbara got her credit, and she lived long enough to win a Noble Prize in 1983.


Her personal story can easily fit into the category of feminists. Being independent since childhood and interested in botany during high school, she went to Cornell University despite her mother's objection, and she never married. However, I have a different interpretation of her legacy, especially after reading her quote. 


"Over the many years, I truly enjoyed not being required to defend my interpretations. I could just work with the greatest of pleasure. I never felt the need nor the desire to defend my views. If I turned out to be wrong, I just forgot that I ever held such a view. It didn't matter." — Barbara McClintock


I see a woman finding her passion for genetics in her late teens. This passion supported her for 70 years to indulge in her world of research. She never sought to be independent or less feminine as she was born with the characters. The rest happened naturally. There was no fight nor misery. Until Barbara died in 1992, she never left the cornfield. The Nobel prize did not matter. Not having a family did not matter. She loved her cornfield and microscope, and she had fun with her students and co-workers. She was a woman following her heart.


It is enlightening to read about this amazing woman 30 years after her name came to my ears. Few of us can leave a legacy like Barbara McClintock, but we can all learn from her attitude towards life and career.

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