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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Hanson's informal notes concerning Barbara, he claims that she weighed approximately how many pounds?

2. Lewis Stadler had been at the University of Missouri in Columbia since what year?

3. What year did Barbara McClintock graduate from Cornell?

4. When Barbara went to visit Stadler in Missouri, she went to look at the corn that they had. Barbara noticed that they were calling the corn what?

5. When it became clear to Barbara that she could no longer stay at Missouri, what did she consider as a possible career?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did Barbara experience long-term consequences because of the absence of a professional niche?

2. What is the final stage of mitosis and what happens during this phase?

3. Who was the person that came to Cornell to get his PhD in genetics, why did he come to Cornell, and what was his previous experience?

4. Why did Barbara's position at Missouri not work out, according to Barbara herself?

5. When C.D. Darlington was describing the views of colleagues in different types of sciences, which type of scientist does he compare to the naturalist and how does a naturalist see chromosomes?

6. In the mid-1930's and when she left Missouri what had she considered doing because of her jobless status?

7. Who was Lewis Stadler and why did he want Barbara as a colleague?

8. What happened when Barbara discovered a way to identify maize chromosomes when she was working as a paid assistant to a cytologist?

9. An excerpt from Frank Hanson's informal notes about Barbara McClintock are found in Chapter 4. How does Hanson describe Barbara's physical appearance?

10. How did Barbara spend her time between the years of 1931 and 1933?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explain Watson and Crick's research, what they were famous for, and what their answer was to the question in Chapter 11, "how do genes make exact copies of themselves?"

Essay Topic 2

Describe how Barbara McClintock broke free "of the hidden constraints of tacit assumptions" and allowed "the results of [her] experiments to speak for themselves."

Essay Topic 3

Describe Sara McClintock (Barbara's mother). What struggles did Sara McClintock have to face while raising her family? Compare and contrast Sara McClintock and her daughter, Barbara McClintock.

(see the answer keys)

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