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I received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering mobile genetic elements, more than 30 years after I first described controlling elements — the first woman to win that prize unshared.

After retiring from the Carnegie Institution in 1967 I kept working with graduate students and colleagues at Cold Spring Harbor, and gave talks on mobile genetic elements and the history of genetics research for junior scientists.

From 1957 I led research on indigenous maize races in Central and South America, tracing maize evolution through chromosomal change; with collaborators I published The Chromosomal Constitution of Races of Maize.

At George Beadle's invitation I went to Stanford in 1944 and described the karyotype and full life cycle of Neurospora crassa, cleaning up its cytology so it could become a model species for genetic research.

My working rule: when what I see in the kernels and under the microscope contradicts the accepted model of genes, I follow the observation and put every number on the record. Following it led me to gene regulation by controlling elements a decade before the lac operon.

At Missouri I watched broken maize chromosomes rejoin, bridge and break again through each mitosis, producing massive mutation visible as endosperm variegation — a research finding still studied in cancer science.

I developed a carmine-staining method and switched from root-tip cells to microspore cells, which let me show the morphology of all 10 maize chromosomes for the first time — a research technique that entered most genetics textbooks.