The Nobel Prize-Winning, LSD Dropping, Yet Problematic Scientist Who Invented PCR

9 min readDec 9, 2020

‘The world owes him some gratitude, but he was not pleasant’

Every day, hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of molecular reactions are happening in laboratories worldwide. Small droplets of liquid that give us a lens into an individual’s respiratory pathways are analyzed for whether or not they contain the pathogen of the year: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The technique used for this analysis is called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and it exploits the ability of genetic material to replicate. Although imperfect, it’s been critical in diagnosing the disease by amplifying genes specific to SARS-CoV-2. When it’s accurate, PCR helps confirm positive cases, slows the spread of infection, and allows health officials to treat individuals who have Covid-19.

In a sense, Covid-19 has popularized PCR. Over the last nine months, as the virus ballooned, PCR has transformed from a technical term used nearly exclusively by scientists — and one that would be flagged as jargon by many science editors — to one that has become a part of the general vernacular. While PCR is now well-known, many may not know the person who developed the idea.

If James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin uncovered the secret of life by documenting the discovery of DNA in the 1950s, Kary Mullis, PhD, decoded it with PCR. Mullis came up with the idea in 1983, and a decade later, won the Nobel Prize in recognition of his work.

Without PCR, science and the world as we know it — including having a testing method for Covid-19 — wouldn’t exist. “PCR is veritably synonymous with biotechnology itself,” says Richard Doyle, PhD, a historian of science focusing on information biology at Pennsylvania State University. Without it, projects such as the Human Genome Project, an ambitious endeavor to understand the secrets of our genes, would not even be conceivable.

Mullis passed away last year at 74 in his home in Newport Beach, California, due to complications from pneumonia. He has frequently been described as “eccentric” and “quirky” for his open use of psychedelics, belief in astrology, and an encounter with a glowing raccoon. Some may even argue that Mullis was an unlikely Nobel laureate, a maverick. But those descriptions belie some of Mullis’ more problematic aspects: He used his platform as Nobel laureate to flout that HIV causes AIDS and that climate change was real. He had a proclivity for pursuing women in his earlier days and sexually harassed a female journalist who interviewed him. Which makes one wonder: If Kary Mullis contains multitudes — as we all do — how should we remember him?

Kary Mullis was born in 1944, in Lenoir, North Carolina, a town at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

His childhood was rife with youthful curiosities. When it was time to pick what he wanted for Christmas, seven-year-old Mullis leafed through catalogs and landed on a Gilbert Chemistry Set. “Something about tubes filled with things with exotic names intrigued me,” he wrote in his memoir Dancing Naked in the Mind Field. “My objective with that set was to figure out what things I might put together to cause an explosion.”

After high school, Mullis started immersing himself in the world of chemistry. His father got him a job at Columbia Organic, a supplier of research chemicals. By the time he made it to the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta for college, he married Richards Haley, with whom he had a daughter. Despite his obligations to his family, Mullis was a good student and got good grades, and graduated with a degree in, fittingly, chemistry.

After college, Mullis was torn between studying biochemistry or astrophysics. He decided on biochemistry because not only would interest in astrophysics likely diminish after the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, but because biochemistry would be more relatable. “The universe sounds pretty universal, but try discussing it at a party with a 22-year-old woman who never thought about neutral kaon decay rates,” he wrote in his memoir. “Then talk to the same woman about why ethylamino derivatives of safrole like MDA will make you want to take off your clothes and feel warm and cuddly for about eight hours. A strong social impulse will lead you away from astrophysics and towards biochemistry.”

Mullis moved his family across the country to Berkeley to pursue his PhD. It was the 1960s and the heyday of the counterculture revolution in the Bay Area. In his first year, Mullis befriended a man named Brad, the only guy in his class with long hair. “I figured he would have LSD,” Mullis wrote. His early, mind-altering forays with LSD led him to synthesize other psychedelic chemicals in the lab — some with unexpected, bad consequences.

At Berkeley, after completing his PhD, Mullis bought a cabin in Mendocino County. Throughout the remaining years of his life, Mullis returned frequently to it. It was there that he planted trees, foraged for mushrooms, and even, according to Mullis, encountered an extraterrestrial glowing raccoon while walking outside his cabin.

The Nobel Prize-Winning, LSD Dropping, Yet Problematic Scientist Who Invented PCR

‘The world owes him some gratitude, but he was not pleasant’

Written by Mailfritzi