Mary-Claire King

Mary-Claire King is an American geneticist whose 1990 research demonstrated that a significant share of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer could be linked to a single gene locus on chromosome 17, a finding that identified what became known as the BRCA1 gene region and, after years of further work by several research groups to isolate the gene itself, opened the way to genetic testing for inherited cancer risk. Earlier in her career, King's graduate research with biochemist Allan Wilson found that humans and chimpanzees share roughly ninety-nine percent of their genetic material, a strikingly high similarity that helped reshape scientific understanding of how closely related the two species are and of how relatively small genetic differences, particularly in gene regulation, can produce substantial differences between species. King has also applied genetic identification methods to human rights work, developing techniques using mitochondrial DNA to help the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina identify children who had been abducted and given to other families during that country's military dictatorship and reunite them with their biological relatives, work she has continued extending to identifying victims of human rights abuses and war in other countries. King, a professor at the University of Washington, received the National Medal of Science in 2014 for her contributions to human genetics.