Intolerable Genius
Jamie Dlux takes a look back at the late scientist Kary Mullis, an American biochemist, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1993 after inventing the polymerase chain reaction (or PCR) technique.
Mullis, who died in 2019, was quite a rebel. Married four times, he was an avid surfer and indulged in LSD and other psychedelic drugs that he crafted himself while studying chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. His PCR development was the highlight of his career — providing a means to replicate complex strands of DNA sequences.
Always a maverick, Mullis tangled frequently with other scientists and generated a lot of debate. He challenged many of the arguments behind climate change and ozone depletion. He also questioned the linkage between HIV and AIDS, causing some to label him an “AIDS denialist.”
