People, Profiles

Read the amazing travails of a Berkeley professor

By Public Affairs

Mary-Claire King
Mary-Claire King speaks at The Moth's storytelling event. (Photo via The Moth)
Mary-Claire King

Mary-Claire King speaks at The Moth's storytelling event. (Photo via The Moth)

Mary-Claire King was an assistant professor at UC Berkeley when a series of calamities struck in a single week: her husband left her for one of his graduate students, burglars tore apart her home, her mother visited and blamed her for everything.

King’s life was coming apart and in just a few days, she was expected to fly to Washington, D.C., to secure a grant for her cancer research. Should she skip her flight and give up on the life-changing grant?

Telling her story for the The Moth storytelling series, King, who is now a professor at the University of Washington, recalls with humor and grace how she navigated the demands of motherhood and began a project that would change the course of cancer research with the unexpected help of a Bay Area baseball icon.

Read Mary-Claire King's complete, charming story on Huff Post.