KARY MULLIS 1997, INVENTOR OF PCR TEST.

Kary received a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993, for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The process, which Kary Mullis conceptualized in 1983, is hailed as one of the monumental scientific techniques of the twentieth century.

Kary B. Mullis, a biochemist who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a way to analyze DNA easily and cheaply and thus pave the way for major advances in medical diagnostics, molecular biology and forensic science. Today, his method is used to detect genetic mutations that can lead to diagnoses of diseases, like sickle cell anemia; analyze ancient sources of DNA, like bones. It was used as well to decode and map the entire human DNA as part of the Human Genome Project, the landmark international research effort that ran from 1990 to 2003.

“Science, like nothing else among the institutions of mankind, grows like a weed every year. Art is subject to arbitrary fashion, religion is inwardly focused and driven only to sustain itself, law shuttles between freeing us and enslaving us.”