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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. Barbara McClintock sent off a paper entitled "Some Parallels Between Gene Control Systems in Maize and in Bacteria" to where?

2. How many years later was it when Barbara made her second presentation at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium?

3. In the mutant seedlings that Barbara had grown, what could be seen that didn't belong?

4. In Chapter 9, Evelyn Keller states that both science and art are dependent on what?

5. Which type of RNA contains the information coding for the sequence of amino acids?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Barbara feel was an organism that was especially unappreciated and why?

2. What difference did Milislav Demerec observe about the symposium papers from 1941 compared to the papers from 1951?

3. In Chapter 7, when it was mentioned that Barbara was in private upheaval, what significant event happened during that time and why was she in private upheaval?

4. Why was Barbara apprehensive about presenting her data at the next annual Cold Spring Harbor Symposium?

5. Among the plants in Barbara's very first crop there was one that was particularly noteworthy. Why?

6. In the early twentieth century what kind of science did biology transform into and what kind of science had it been before that?

7. Why did Freeman Dyson state that Richard Feynman was unable to communicate and hard to understand?

8. How did Milislav Demerec describe what the view of genes was in 1941?

9. How did Max Delbruck put Cold Spring Harbor on the map and for whom?

10. in the late 1950s, what was the new option that materialized for Barbara?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Throughout the book we learn and read about times in science when there were surprises because the implied ideas weren't met. What were some of these surprises that Barbara or others met? How did these surprises help Barbara's work? Did some of these surprises hinder Barbara's progression in her work?

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

Do you think Evelyn Keller did a good job in describing what type of person Barbara McClintock was? How did Keller do at describing scientific jargon or vocabulary to the average reader? How did Keller touch each part of McClintock's life in her book? Explain your answers and use specific information from the book to support your explanations.

(see the answer keys)

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