Dancing Naked in the Mind Field

1998 SCARCE SIGNED FIRST PRINTING OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY CONTROVERSIAL NOBEL LAUREATE WHO DEVELOPED PCR.

14x21.5 cm hardcover, black paper-covered boards, black cloth spine with gilt title, i-x, 222 pp, inscribed on title page, To Bob/ Kary B. Mullis. Fine in fine dust jacket in protective mylar sleeve.

KARY BANKS MULLIS (1944-2019) earned his PhD in 1973 in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Although he published a sole-author paper in Nature in the field of astrophysics in 1968, he struggled to pass his oral exams. Following his graduation, Mullis completed postdoctoral fellowships in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. Despite little experience in molecular biology, Mullis worked as a DNA chemist at Cetus for seven years, ultimately serving as the firm's director of molecular and biological research; it was there, in 1983, that Mullis developed the polymerase chain reaction. That spring, he was driving his vehicle late one night with his girlfriend, who was also a chemist at Cetus, when he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase; a technique which would allow rapid amplification of a small strand of DNA and become a standard procedure in molecular biology labs. Cetus took Mullis off his usual projects to concentrate on PCR full-time. Mullis succeeded in demonstrating PCR December 16, 1983. In his Nobel Prize lecture, he remarked that the success didn't make up for his girlfriend breaking up with him shortly before: I was sagging as I walked out to my little silver Honda Civic. Neither [assistant] Fred, empty Beck's bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome. He received a $10,000 bonus from Cetus for the invention. Mullis has said that the never-ending quest for more grants and staying with established dogmas has hurt science. He believes that Science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they are going to find out, not for what they actually produce.

Product Info

Publisher: Pantheon Books

Year: 1998

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

First Edition

Seller Info

BiomedRareBooksLLCABAAILABIOBA

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Country: United States