Hey, I'm Flor Lichtenen, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Today, it's common knowledge that many diseases and conditions have some kind of genetic link.

But that wasn't always the case.

Long before the Human Genome Project tied so many health issues to differences in genetics,

way back in 1990, researchers identified

a gene called BRCA1. This was the first gene linked to a hereditary form of any common cancer.

People with a mutation of BRCA1 stood a higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer than those without the mutation.

Dr. Mary Claire King is a geneticist at the University of Washington. She and her lab were the first

to identify that gene back in 1990. That discovery changed the way we thought about the

inheritance of certain cancers. But that's not her only claim

to fame. She used genetics to reunite children who were born in captivity or kidnapped by the

Argentinian military dictatorship with their families. Her Ph.D. work upended conventional

wisdom about our evolutionary origins. Her research has changed the game again and again.

Last September, I got the chance to sit down with Mary Claire King,

to find out about how she thinks about her work, what propels her,

and what we can learn from her remarkable life in the lab.

She joined us from KUOW in Seattle.

Mary Claire, thank you for being here,

and welcome back to Science Friday. Thank you very much, Laura. Thank you. Let's go back to your salad days. I read your interest in problem solving began with Cubs games. When I was about six, my dad was already disabled. He was retired early with what was a very

serious form of Parkinson's and was home. And already, even in the early 50s, one could have

on black and white TV, baseball games every day. So we would watch together

the Cubs games. And my favorite player was, of course, Ernie Banks. And my dad would make up

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