She was awarded 14 Honorary Doctor of Science degrees and an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. In 1986 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. During her final years, McClintock led a more public life, especially after Evelyn Fox Keller's 1983 book A feeling for the organism brought McClintock's story to the public. She remained a regular presence in the Cold Spring Harbor community, and gave talks on mobile genetic elements and the history of genetics research for the benefit of junior scientists. An anthology of her 43 publications The discovery and characterization of transposable elements: the collected papers of Barbara McClintock was published in 1987. McClintock died in Huntington, New York, on September 2, 1992 at the age of 90; she never married or had children.

Since her death, McClintock has been the subject of the biographical work by science historian Nathaniel C. Comfort, in The tangled field : Barbara McClintock's search for the patterns of genetic control. Comfort's biography contests some claims about McClintock, described as the "McClintock Myth", which he claims was perpetuated by the earlier biography by Keller. Keller's thesis was that McClintock was long ignored because she was a woman working in the sciences, whereas Comfort asserts that McClintock was well regarded by her professional peers, even in the early years of her career. Although Comfort argues that McClintock was not a victim of gender discrimination, she has been widely written about in the context of women's studies, and most recent biographical works on women in science feature accounts of her experience. She is held up as a role model for girls in such works of children's literature as Edith Hope Fine's Barbara McClintock, Nobel Prize geneticist, Deborah Heiligman's Barbara McClintock: alone in her field and Mary Kittredge's Barbara McClintock. A recent biography for young adults by Naomi Pasachoff, Barbara McClintock, Genius of Genetics, provides a new perspective, based on the current literature.

On May 4, 2005 the United States Postal Service issued the "American Scientists" commemorative postage stamp series, a set of four 37-cent self-adhesive stamps in several configurations. The scientists depicted were Barbara McClintock, John von Neumann, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Richard Feynman. McClintock was also featured in a 1989 four-stamp issue from Sweden which illustrated the work of eight Nobel Prize-winning geneticists. A small building at Cornell University and a laboratory building at Cold Spring Habor Laboratory bear her name to this day. A street has been named after her in the new “Adlershof Development Society” science park in Berlin

George Snell / Jean Dausset / Jon J. van Rood (1978) · Roger Sperry / Arvid Carlsson / Oleh Hornykiewicz (1979) · César Milstein / Leo Sachs / James L. Gowans (1980) · Barbara McClintock / Stanley Norman Cohen (1981) · Jean-Pierre Changeux / Solomon H. Snyder / James W. Black (1982) · Donald F. Steiner (1984/5) · Osamu Hayaishi (1986) · Pedro Cuatrecasas / Meir Wilchek (1987) · Henri G. Hers / Elizabeth F. Neufeld (1988) · John Gurdon / Edward B. Lewis (1989) · Maclyn McCarty (1990) · Seymour Benzer (1991) · Judah Folkman (1992) · Michael Berridge / Yasutomi Nishizuka (1994/5) · Stanley B. Prusiner (1995/6) · Mary F. Lyon (1996/7) · Michael Sela / Ruth Arnon (1998) · Eric Kandel (1999) · Avram Hershko / Alexander Varshavsky (2001) · Ralph L. Brinster / Mario Capecchi / Oliver Smithies (2002/3) · Robert Weinberg / Roger Y. Tsien (2004) · Alexander Levitzki / Anthony R. Hunter / Anthony Pawson (2005) · Howard Cedar / Aharon Razin (2008)

Baruch Blumberg / Daniel Gajdusek (1976) · Roger Guillemin / Andrew Schally / Rosalyn Yalow (1977) · Werner Arber / Daniel Nathans / Hamilton O. Smith (1978) · Allan Cormack / Godfrey Hounsfield (1979) · Baruj Benacerraf / Jean Dausset / George Snell (1980) · Roger Sperry / David H. Hubel / Torsten Wiesel (1981) · Sune Bergström / Bengt I. Samuelsson / John Vane (1982) · Barbara McClintock (1983) · Niels Jerne / Georges Köhler / César Milstein (1984) · Michael Brown / Joseph L. Goldstein (1985) · Stanley Cohen / Rita Levi-Montalcini (1986) · Susumu Tonegawa (1987) · James W. Black / Gertrude B. Elion / George H. Hitchings (1988) · J. Michael Bishop / Harold E. Varmus (1989) · Joseph Murray / E. Donnall Thomas (1990) · Erwin Neher / Bert Sakmann (1991) · Edmond Fischer / Edwin G. Krebs (1992) · Richard J. Roberts / Phillip Sharp (1993) · Alfred G. Gilman / Martin Rodbell (1994) · Edward B. Lewis / Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard / Eric F. Wieschaus (1995) · Peter C. Doherty / Rolf M. Zinkernagel (1996) · Stanley B. Prusiner (1997) · Robert F. Furchgott / Louis Ignarro / Ferid Murad (1998) · Günter Blobel (1999) · Arvid Carlsson / Paul Greengard / Eric Kandel (2000)

1964: Roger Adams · Othmar H. Ammann · Theodosius Dobzhansky · Neal Elgar Miller

1986: Herbert A. Simon · 1987: Anne Anastasi · George J. Stigler · 1988: Milton Friedman

1990: Leonid Hurwicz · Patrick Suppes · 1991: Robert W. Kates · George A. Miller · 1992: Eleanor J. Gibson · 1994: Robert K. Merton · 1995: Roger N. Shepard · 1996: Paul Samuelson · 1997: William K. Estes · 1998: William Julius Wilson · 1999: Robert M. Solow

2000: Gary Becker · 2001: George Bass · 2003: R. Duncan Luce · 2004: Kenneth Arrow · 2005: Gordon H. Bower