Barbara Mcclintock's Academic Career

Barbara McClintock was a woman ahead of her time. She was heralded as the most distinguished cytogeneticist of her time, in a time where female influence in that field, or any STEM field was nearly unheard of. McClintock overcame obstacles in her academic career, and went on to produce her research on ‘jumping genes’, which a major impact that lasted for generations to come and garnered her numerous accolades and awards. Barbara McClintock was born on June 16th, 1902, in Hartford, Connecticut, where she lived until 1908, when her family moved to Brooklyn, where she completed high school with an interest in genetics and science. From there, she enrolled in the in an Ivy League school in 1919, the University of Cornell, which had a prestigious reputation even then. She completed her bachelor’s degree in 1923, her master’s degree in 1925, and just two years later, earned her doctorate in 1927. During her time at Cornell she served as the graduate assistant in the university’s botany department. After receiving her doctorate, McClintock was employed at Cornell until 1931. During …show more content…
She studied in Germany in 1933 for a brief period before returning to Cornell for three years. She was a member of the faculty of the University of Missouri for almost five years, until she realized the ideas the university had of how female scientists should conduct themselves, and left in 1941. She connected with a scientist named Milislav Demerec after working with him for a few months at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and when he became head of the genetics department at Carnegie he offered McClintock a job, which she accepted in 1942 after some deliberation. During her time at Cold Spring, McClintock discovered the transposition of chromosomes in corn genes, which was the main feature of her work that earned her the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physiology or