Maxine Singer was a molecular biologist who helped map DNA and led the debate about the ethics of genetic engineering.
Maxine Singer’s Ebroa
Born in New York City, Maxine Singer earned degrees in chemistry and biology from Swarthmore College, earned her PhD from Yale University, then joined Leon Heppel’s Laboratory of Biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health. Her research with Heppel helped map the genetic code and gave us a greater understanding of what makes us who we are.
Singer made waves in 1973 when, on the heels of new advances in DNA that opened the door to genetic engineering, she spearheaded the debate over the ethics of such work — and of the potential dangers. Her efforts resulted in the first set of rules dealing with the issue. She was not opposed to genetic engineering yet felt that established guidelines were warranted.
An elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Singer was president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1988 to 2002. She also was an American Philosophical Society member, earned the National Medal of Science in 1992, and in 1999 became the first woman to receive the Vannevar Bush Award.
On her experience learning with other women at Swarthmore College:
“The invisible walls around the campus shielded us from the fact, which most people knew and we were to learn, that there was little space in the outside world for women as scientists.” — from an essay in The Meaning of Swarthmore, 2004
Tributes to Maxine Singer
Full obituary: The New York Times
