She discovered genes can jump around the genome — and was dismissed for decades

Studying patterns of colour in maize kernels through the 1940s, Barbara McClintock found genetic elements that could move from one chromosome position to another, switching neighbouring genes on and off. Fellow scientists considered her results too strange to take seriously; the field caught up only in the 1960s-70s, and she won an unshared Nobel Prize in 1983.

— Barbara McClintock, The Origin and Behavior of Mutable Loci in Maize — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1950