Science Friday A Trailblazing Geneticist Reflects On Her Life And Work
Sep 16, 2025
Mary-Claire King, a renowned geneticist and American Cancer Society Professor at the University of Washington, explores her groundbreaking work identifying the BRCA1 gene linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. She shares her journey from studying chimps to tackling cancer, emphasizing how personal and political events shaped her research. King also discusses the essential role of intuition in science and the importance of collaboration, activism, and diversity in advancing genetic research and improving women's health.
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Early Lessons From Baseball Puzzles
- Mary-Claire King learned logical problem-solving from her father’s baseball story problems as a child.
- That early training shaped her scientific habit of breaking complex phenomena into solvable hypotheses.
Regulatory Changes Explain Big Morphology Shifts
- King’s PhD work found human and chimp proteins nearly identical, prompting a regulatory-evolution hypothesis.
- She proposed morphological differences arise from changes in gene timing and expression, not protein sequences.
Chile Coup Influenced Her Career Shift
- Her time in Chile during the 1973 coup exposed King to broader social problems and shifted her interests.
- That experience helped her see genetics as a tool applicable beyond evolutionary questions.