Maxine Frank Singer (born 1931), US molecular biologist. Singer's PhD work was carried out at Yale University. From 1956, she worked at the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health, where her synthesis work contributed to Nirenberg's experiments that uncovered the nature of the genetic code. Singer also organised early efforts to consider the risks of genetic engineering. She chaired the 1973 Gordon Conference on Nucleic Acids, and was also involved in the 1975 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA. From 1988 to 2002, she was President of the Carnegie Institution. Photographed circa 1963.