"If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say." Barbara McClintockI love this quote from Nobel prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock. It's like the science-y version of, "You do you!" It's the motto she lived her life by, and very much something a self-rescuing princess would follow.
I've been reading about her lately, and while historians might disagree on the sociological impact of her of her achievements and the role she played in history, there is no doubt she was a truly remarkable woman. What I find so fascinating about her, though, is her absolute dedication to doing things her way. She's most well-known for her detailed research on corn chromosomes, a truly wondrous achievement: she discovered its genetic makeup and then studied its evolution. But if you could have asked her what her greatest accomplishment was, she would insist that it was discovering genetic control -- the idea that genes can be switched on or off. Of course, this was something she discovered while conducting her exhaustive research on ... you guessed it... corn.