born June 16, 1902, Hartford, Conn., U.S.
died Sept. 2, 1992, Huntington, N.Y.
U.S. geneticist.
She received her doctorate from Cornell University. In the 1940s and '50s, her experiments with variations in the coloration of kernels of corn revealed that genetic information is not stationary. She isolated two control elements in genetic material and found not only that they moved but that the change in position affected the behaviour of neighbouring genes, and she suggested that these elements were responsible for the diversity in cells during an organism's development. Her pioneering research, whose importance was not recognized for many years, eventually resulted in her being awarded a 1983 Nobel Prize.