Barbara McClintock

Celebrating a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist

Barbara Mcclintock’s experimental corn gardens yielded crucial clues about the plant’s genetic material. In 1929, she became the first person to identify all ten maize chromosomes. In the late 1940s, while studying the tendency of a specific chromosome to break, she discovered that some genes can move to a new location on a chromosome; not all genes were fixed in place, as was generally believed. In 1983, more than 30 years later, McClintock received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the age of 81.

37c Barbara McClintock single

Object Details

Date
May 4, 2005
Description
The Postal Service issued the 37-cent, American Scientists commemorative stamps in four designs on May 4, 2005, in New Haven, Connecticut. The stamps were designed by Victor Stabin of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
The stamps honor four American scientists: geneticist Barbara McClintock, mathematician John von Neumann, physicist Richard Feynman, and thermodynamicist Josiah Willard Gibbs.
For each stamp, artist Stabin created a collage featuring a portrait of the scientist and drawings that are associated with major contributions made by the scientist. Information about the specific elements in each collage is contained in the design briefs of the individual profiles on the back of each stamp. The Banknote Corporation of America, Inc., and Sennett Security Products printed 50 million stamps in the offset process with microprinting.
Reference:
Postal Bulletin (March 3, 2005).
unused
Place
United States of America
Topic
Contemporary (1990-present)
Science
Women's Heritage
U.S. Stamps
See more items in
National Postal Museum Collection
Credit line
Copyright United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.
Data Source
National Postal Museum
Object number
2005.2021.27
Type
Postage Stamps
Medium
paper; ink (multicolored)/ lithographed
GUID
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/hm8a3cd672a-2017-4809-ba23-4015e435f1ee
Record ID
npm_2005.2021.27