Her colleague Dr. Maynard Olson, director of the UW Genome Center and a prime figure in the Human Genome Project, said that beyond the search for a cure for breast cancer, King has changed the way that people think about human genetics: “Before BRCA1, there was a widespread view that diseases like breast cancer were caused by multiple genes that interact with environmental factors. She told a different story: that in carefully selected families one could find a fairly simple genetic link for breast cancer. It provided a powerful path forward.”

King and her colleagues also are studying the genetics of deafness. They have identified the gene for inherited deafness in a large, extended family in Costa Rica. They are now working with Israeli and Palestinian geneticists to identify genes for inherited hearing loss in Middle Eastern families. King is also looking at immune system genes in people with systemic lupus erythematosus for clues to its genetic cause.

The spirit of an activist and human rights champion permeates her work. She has been politically active since her days as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. She worked for Ralph Nader and taught science at the University of Chile during the Allende period. In the early 1980s, she used genetic tests to identify people or their remains to reunite Argentinean families with grandchildren whose parents had disappeared.

She is the recipient of many honors, including the Clowes Award for Basic Research from the American Association for Cancer Research and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation Award. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine and its Council, and is the Disney Foundation-American Cancer Society Professor for Breast Cancer Research. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has served on the President’s Cancer Panel National Commission on Breast Cancer, the Committee on the Use of DNA in Forensics of the National Academy of Sciences, and was director of the Molecular Genetics Identification Laboratory for the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal.