Maxine Singer: Picturing a Life in Science

As a distinguished molecular biologist and science administrator, Maxine Singer spent much of her career advocating for women in science and championing public education in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). She is best remembered for her groundbreaking research on nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), the chemical elements of heredity.

Friedman first takes photographs of his subjects, which serve as the basis for his painted or drawn preparatory studies. Both of Singer’s likenesses in the Portrait Gallery’s collection—made eleven years apart—are rooted in the artist’s photography session with Singer.

Singer completed her PhD in biochemistry at Yale University in 1957, just four years after the scientists James Watson and Francis Crick proposed the double-helix structure of DNA molecules. Upon realizing that this discovery promised future directions for research, Singer pursued a career in the then-emerging areas of nucleic acid chemistry and enzymology (the study of enzymes).

Singer began working at the National Institute of Arthritic and Metabolic Diseases at the National Institutes of Health in 1956. Her research on the role of enzymes in regulating the synthesis of DNA and RNA was crucial to deciphering the genetic code in the early 1960s.

In recognition of Singer’s “outstanding scientific accomplishments and her deep concern for the societal responsibility of the scientist,” President George H. W. Bush awarded her the National Medal of Science in 1992.

Singer, who champions clearer communication between scientists and the general public, once said, “Science is not an inhuman or superhuman activity. It’s something that humans invented, and it speaks to one of our great needs—to understand the world around us.”