Maxine Singer—A Life in Research and Advocacy

By Susan L. Speaker ~

This week, as we observe Women’s History Month, Circulating Now highlights the career of biochemist Maxine Frank Singer (b. 1931).

During a career spanning nearly six decades, Dr. Singer has made important contributions to the deciphering of the genetic code and to our understanding of the synthesis and structure of RNA and DNA, the chemical elements of heredity. She has championed the cause of women and minorities in science and built innovative programs to improve science education. Singer also took a leading role in devising safety guidelines for the controversial new technology of recombinant DNA in the 1970s.

Born in New York City, Singer had an early interest in science. Her high school chemistry teacher encouraged her to pursue a chemistry major at Swarthmore College, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1952. Though neither academia nor industry were especially welcoming to women scientists at the time, she found supportive mentors and a community of women science students at Swarthmore. The graduate program in biochemistry at Yale, where she earned her PhD in 1957, was likewise hospitable to women scientists. At the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases (NIAMDD) (now the National Institutes of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), which she joined as a postdoctoral fellow in 1956, Singer was also fortunate to find good mentors and an unusually accepting work environment. In 1975, she joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as chief of the Nucleic Acid Enzymology Section in the Laboratory of Biochemistry. She rose to chief of the Laboratory of Biochemistry in 1980, a position in which she oversaw the work of fifteen research groups.

In the wake of James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1952 discovery of the double-helical structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), Singer entered the emerging field of nucleic acid chemistry, a decision that brought her to the forefront of the new science of molecular biology. The artificial RNA polymers she produced with Leon Heppel in the course of their work on the structure and synthesis of ribonucleic acid (RNA) enabled Marshall Nirenberg and Heinrich Matthaei to unravel the genetic code in the early 1960s. Singer subsequently studied genetic recombination in defective animal viruses and the structure of the chromosomal DNA-protein complex called chromatin. In the 1980s, she discovered that repeated DNA sequences called LINES (long interspersed repeated sequences) are mobile genetic elements that can jump from place to place on chromosomes in mammalian cells, sometimes inducing genetic mutations that cause disease.

During the early 1970s, as debate over the potential risks of the first gene recombination experiments grew ever more heated, Maxine Singer was a leading voice in balancing scientific principles and public welfare. Recombinant DNA research promised to revolutionize the understanding of genetics, but because they involved manipulation of genes, scientists, and laymen alike worried that these experiments might produce new pathogens that could endanger human health or irrevocably alter the environment. Singer helped organize the landmark Asilomar Conference in February 1975, at which scientists agreed to impose restrictions on this research, and to develop a framework for removing these restrictions as knowledge of the science advanced.

Because her undergraduate and graduate institutions had been unusually supportive of female scientists, and because she easily found employment at a welcoming institution (the NIAMDD—not all of NIH was equally welcoming to women), Singer did not have to grapple with the difficulties faced by other women scientists during the 1950s and 1960s. As she later told the historian Horace Judson:

“I don’t think I would have known even if the bias existed. It was not a subject we thought about or discussed . . . A lot of the behavior that we simply accepted as ‘normal’ would today, quite properly, be seen as biased and unacceptable.”

This sanguine view was shattered in the mid-1960s, after she had become an independent investigator and had difficulty recruiting postdoctoral researchers. Her lab chief explained forthrightly that although the department received a steady stream of applicants, none of them wanted to work with a woman for fear that it would hinder their professional advancement. “No matter what I tell them about you and no matter how I show them how exciting the work is, they just . . . won’t do it.” As a result, Singer became an outspoken advocate of women in science.

In 1988 Singer was elected president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, one of the nation’s preeminent private research organizations in biology, astronomy, and the earth sciences.  Among her major achievements were the creation of a new department of global ecology, the installation of the twin Magellan telescopes at a Carnegie observatory in Chile, and the creation of science education programs for students and teachers from the Washington, DC, public schools. During her first decade at Carnegie, she retained her position as scientist emeritus at the National Cancer Institute, spending two days a week on her research there. Singer retired from the Carnegie Institution in 2002.

Throughout her career, Singer was an active participant in public debates about science. As chairman of the National Academies of Sciences’ Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, she led influential studies of graduate and postgraduate education in the sciences and engineering, of genetic engineering, and in particular of new techniques that offer the possibility of cloning human beings. Shortly before she stepped down as chairman, Singer’s committee commissioned a report assessing persistent cultural, professional, and institutional obstacles to the advancement of women in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics. Upon its publication, Singer wrote an editorial in Science condemning the “unintentional bias harbored by both men and women and outmoded institutional structures” that she believed hindered recruitment and retention of women in science and engineering. Among these she counted presumptions about innate cognitive differences between men and women and employment policies that make it difficult for women to both pursue research and have children. Since the nation’s future prosperity depended on boosting the ranks of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, Singer predicted, underrepresentation of women and minorities in these fields would prove costly.

Singer’s many honors include election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978) and the National Academy of Sciences (1979). In 1992, she was awarded the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor. Singer has written over a hundred scientific articles and has co-authored several books, including Genes and Genomes (1991) and Dealing with Genes (1993).

We invite you to explore Dr. Singer’s remarkable career and work through the documents and resources provided on the Maxine Singer Profiles in Science site.

This post features text written by Dr. K. Walter Hickel, formerly a historian with NLM’s Digital Manuscripts Program.

Profiles in Science presents the lives and work of innovators in science, medicine, and public health through in-depth research, curation, and digitization of archival collection materials. National Library of Medicine (NLM) historians and archivists review, study, and select documents from the Library’s the Archives and Modern Manuscript collections, and collaborating institutions, to bring the public biographical stories and direct access to supporting primary sources. The Maxine Singer Profiles in Science site is a collaboration with the Library of Congress, the repository of her papers. Individuals interested in conducting research using the full collection of Maxine Singer Papers should contact the Library of Congress.

Susan Speaker, PhD, is a historian in the User Services and Collection Division at the National Library of Medicine.