An Introvert as Outsider Scientist
For pioneering geneticist Barbara McClintock, being an introvert gave her resilience when scientific peers couldn’t grasp what she was up to.
Geneticist Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, the first American woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in any of the sciences. This represented delayed recognition of her innovative research in the 1940s and 1950s related to genes and chromosomes, research that was largely dismissed or ignored until the field caught up with her discoveries in the 1960s and 1970s. McClintock’s rarity as a female scientist during her early years held back her career in many ways. Her introvert personality, however, contributed both to her success as a scientist and to her resilience as a human being.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut to a musically talented mother and a father who struggled to establish his medical practice, McClintock as a child displayed an unusual degree of willful self-sufficiency. She loved to read. She could sit alone, absorbed in thought, for long periods. She also persuaded her parents to have bloomers made for her so she could climb trees and play baseball, football and volleyball with the same freedom as the boys in her neighborhood.
When she walked into her first science course at Cornell, in zoology, she was entranced and soon became particularly interested in genetics. Since women weren’t welcome in the plant breeding department, where genetics was taught, she registered as a graduate student in botany. She settled on maize – corn – as the medium through which she would study changes in genes and chromosomes.
Three Key Introvert Strengths of Barbara McClintock
1.Intense absorption
McClintock’s childhood capacity to pay close attention to her own thoughts and to small details around her bore fruit in her scientific career. She knew the unique properties of each individual maize plant that she raised, the way a great teacher understands the quirks, strengths and weaknesses of every student. This first-hand knowledge gave her richer insights and intuitions than others with a more distanced approach to research
“You’re not conscious of anything else,” she once remarked on her experience of looking at plant cells under the microscope. “You are so absorbed that even small things get big…Nothing else matters. You’re noticing more and more things that most people couldn’t see because they didn’t go intensely over each part, slowly but with great intensity.” (This parallels what artist Georgia O’Keefe said about the flowers she painted: “Nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”)
2.Tenacity
Although scientists who worked alongside her understood her to be a gifted researcher, reactions to the specifics of McClintock’s genetic discoveries in the 1950s ranged from baffled to hostile. In part, this happened because she lacked the gift of explaining complex and unexpected phenomena in simple terms. But the greater factor was how much her findings went against the theoretical dogmas of the time. As discussed by Thomas Kuhn and other historians of science, when scientists feel something shouldn’t be happening because it contradicts their model of their field, they generally don’t put a lot of effort into resolving the puzzle. Skepticism, minimization and dismissal keep the weird findings at bay.
When McClintock realized the extent to which her work was ignored, for around a decade she pulled back from efforts to publish additional papers. But she did not pull back on her research. Nor did she lose faith in her hard-to-explain observations. “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,” she once declared.
Her tenacity was rooted in the autonomy and self-confidence she’d had even as a child. Like a top that had been strongly wound up, she just kept spinning on her own until scientists realized she had had a good approach all along.
From 1942 on, McClintock’s base was a laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, on the north shore of Long Island, New York. This proved a comfortable outpost for solitary activities that she pursued apart from work: taking long walks, bird watching, trail hiking and collecting walnuts. When she finally began receiving award after award for her discoveries, she disliked the publicity that went along with major-media recognition. According to molecular biologist Nina Fedoroff, McClintock “found the ceremonies arduous and the attendant publicity and adulation utterly repugnant.” Many of the famous introverts I’ve profiled shared that recoil, including Marie Curie and Albert Einstein.
3.Resilience
Of course, Barbara McClintock couldn’t help feeling disappointed during the years when most colleagues in her field simply didn’t “get it.” Not only did this not cause her to doubt her interpretations, however, it accentuated the extent to which she engaged in research purely for its own sake. During her speech at the Nobel Prize banquet in her honor, she described her out-of-favor period this way:
“I was not invited to give lectures or seminars, except on rare occasions, or to serve on committees or panels, or to perform other scientists’ duties. Instead of causing personal difficulties, this long interval proved to be a delight. It allowed complete freedom to continue investigations without interruption, and for the pure joy they provided.”
For a quintessential introvert, ostracism has some advantages.