Barbara McClintock received a Ph.D. in Botany from Cornell University in 1927. She was already a leader in Cytogenetics in 1941 when Milislav Demerec, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Genetics at Cold Spring Harbor, hired her as a permanent member of the Carnegie staff. Her small lab was on the second floor of "Animal House" with her experimental maize field across from the building entrance on what is now the parking lot north of the Carnegie building. Her work on the "breakage-fusion-bridge" cycle led directly to her discovery of transposable elements or "jumping genes," which she presented at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in 1951. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983 for this discovery. Throughout her life she was recognized for her groundbreaking work and received many honorary degrees and awards. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1944 and became the first woman president of the Genetics Society of America. Animal House was renamed and dedicated to Barbara McClintock in 1973. Although she officially retired from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1967, she continued working with graduate students and colleagues at CSHL as a scientist emeritus until her death in 1992 at age 90.