Portrait of Barbara McClintock

Barbara McClintock was elected to the Royal Society in 1989, the first American female Fellow. Her election citation reads that she was: "mainly responsible for founding a whole new field of genetics - that of transposable genetic elements. With great industry and brilliant insight she single-handedly characterised two families of transposable elements in maize and built up a stock of detailed genetic information on their properties which continues to be of immense value to other investigators. The novelty of her conclusions initially provoked scepticism, or even disbelief, but her discoveries have been fully confirmed now by molecular as well as genetic analysis. Transposable elements have now been found in many different organisms and are being studied in numerous laboratories throughout the world both for their intrinsic interest and for their value as probes of genetic structure and function.
Prior to this work on transposable elements she was responsible with Barbara Creighton for showing the equivalence of crossovers and chiasmata
The award of her Nobel Prize reflects the importance of her contributions to biological science.