06-16 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Barbara McClintock Waited 32 Years for Her Nobel Prize
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by Barbra
Streisand.
Barbara McClintock Waited 32 Years for Her Nobel Prize
Barbara
McClintock (b. 06-16-1902) American geneticist whose groundbreaking work
in genetics and the precursor of DNA was published in 1951 had to wait
32 years to be honored with the Nobel Prize.
She was 49 when she published
and 81 when she was awarded the Nobel.
BM received the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
That McClintock had not
received the Nobel was becoming quite a scandal - but a scandal that is
usually settled when the person dies since the Nobel is never granted posthumously.
There was very little
controversy about her qualifications. Her contribution was such a great
leap in scientific thinking - chromosomes were not stable and genetic material
could change in a short period of time - that the scientific community
considered it a crackpot theory when she postulated it.
Yet it took FIVE Nobel
awards to men who worked on McClintock's crackpot theory to verify her
thinking - and it was still almost another 20 years after they got their
Nobels growing out of her work for McClintock to get her Nobel award.
In 1962 three of them,
Maurice Wilkins, James Watson, and Francis Crick, received the Nobel, leaving
out any mention of Rosalin Franklin whose vital basic work on the double
helix theory - a proving photograph - was stolen, but Franklin had conveniently
died at 37 to end that controversy - but it still left a living
McClintock and the fact of her basic work.
Her father opposed education
for girls and her mother thought her interest "unfeminine."
McClintok did her heredity/genetic
studies using maize.
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06-16 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS
B. 06-16-1738, Mary Katherine Goddard - Colonial
printer and publisher. Her widowed mother worked in her son's printing
plant in Rhode Island as did MKG.
When he moved away leaving
it in debt, the women continued the business and published the Providence
Gazette. They sold it and moved to Philadelphia to repeat the same
story as the son moved to Baltimore and they published the Pennsylvania
Chronicle.
Again the process was
repeated in Maryland and in1775 but this time MKG was formally recognized
as the editor and publisher of the Maryland Journal which she published
right through the Revolutionary war. She was the first to publish the Declaration
of Independence.
B. 06-16-1892, Ellen Schulz Quillin - founder
and director, San Antonio Museum and director of the Witte Museum.
B. 06-16-1892, Jennie Grossinger, Austrian-born
American hotel executive and philanthropist. JG managed a small family
inn operating on a small chicken farm taking in summer boarders to one
of the most famous resort hotels in the world: Grossinger's in the Catskills
Mountains.
At her death in 1964,
Grossinger's resort consisted of 35 buildings on 1,200 acres and served
150,000 guests a year.
Her children carry on
the tradition.
In the beginning, her
mother was the cook for the guests, her father did the maintenance, and
Jennie was both chambermaid and bookkeeper.
B. 06-16-1898, Marita Bonner, part of the U.S.
Harlem Renaissance who published a number of plays, essays, and short
fiction.
B. 06-16-1899, Helen Francesca Traubel - U.S.
opera, nightclub and movie singer.
HT turned down an offer
by the Metropolitan at age 23 feeling her voice wasn't ready. She supported
herself by singing in local St. Louis churches and synagogues. Finally
in her early 30s she began singing lead roles at the Met becoming the first
American woman to star in Wagnerian operas.
B. 06-16-1917, Katharine Meyer Graham, U.S.
newspaper publisher who guided the Washington Post (and Newsweek
magazine) to a place of prominence. Under her direction they challenged
such national newspapers as the New York and Los Angeles Times,
and Time magazine.
She hired a strong staff
of reporters and editors. She personally gave the go ahead to Post stories
that exposed the Nixon political abuses and led to his resignation.
She never - in the face
of horrendous pressures - flinched nor failed to support her staff. In
fact, Nixon's Attorney General had chortled after a Post article
on the corruption of the Nixon administration that "this
time she's got her tit in a wringer."
He was that confident of the administration's power to crush her. He went
to jail instead.
B. 06-16-1938, Joyce Carol Oates, U.S. writer.
One of this era's most honored writers, JCO is a professor at Princeton
University (1987).
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QUOTES DU JOUR
STREISAND, BARBRA:
"Why is it men are
permitted to be obsessed about their work, but women are only permitted
to be obsessed about men?"
-- Barbra Streisand commenting
when accused of being too focused on her work.
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