 Some of McClintock 's personality and scientific achievements were referred to in Jeffrey Eugenides 's 2011 novel The Marriage Plot , which tells the story of a yeast geneticist named Leonard who suffers from bipolar disorder . He works at a laboratory loosely based on Cold Spring Harbor . The character reminiscent of McClintock is a reclusive geneticist at the fictional laboratory , who makes the same discoveries as her factual counterpart . 
