KELLER, Evelyn Fox.

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A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. First edition, signed by McClintock on the front free endpaper. Keller's biography appeared in the year that McClintock was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of mobile genetic elements; she remains the only woman to have received an unshared prize in that category. Though unmarked as such, this copy is from the library of the geneticist Elof Axel Carlson (1931-2025).The first woman to be elected president of the Genetics Society of America and only the third to be elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, McClintock (1902-1992) is best known for her work on transposons. Although she first published her account in 1950, it was not until the following decade that "McClintock's work began to receive some recognition, as molecular biologists discovered cases of genetic regulation and gene transposition in other organisms. It was not until the late 1970s, however, that her research was fully embraced by the scientific community" (ANB). Keller's (1936-2023) biography captures the turning tide of recognition that the Nobel Prize would crown.A physicist by training, Keller is known for her feminist studies of the history and philosophy of science. "Keller suggested that McClintock's unusually sympathetically engaged relationship to her subject matter (her cultivation of what McClintock called 'a feeling for the organism') was a key factor both in the uncommon novelty and

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