The Capacity to Be Alone

Barbara McClintock was a loner from birth, at least this was what she believed. Her sister Majorie reported that as a child, when McClintock was left alone, she never raised a fuss. And as she grew up, she found little need to interact with others. This was partly due to her mother's emotional distance due to stress but partly due to her natural constitution. McClintock notes that her happiest times in life were when she was alone. As she became a scientist, she worked alone. While she enjoyed sharing her work with her colleagues, she found most people difficult to interact with and had poor social skills. Her lab at Cold Springs Harbor was her lab alone and almost all of her important work was done alone; many researchers have their students do their heavy lifting, taking on the most laborious aspects of research...