MATT GARBIN
Contributor

Students in the Chemistry Club, as well as FDU science scholars, recently visited Monmouth University to hear a lecture given by Kary Mullis, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
Walking into the lecture, many students were expecting a dry presentation on topics above the heads of undergraduates. Mullis broke these expectations right from the start, joking about how his wife was going to yell at him for wearing pants that were too short to reach down to his socks.
The idea of PCR struck him while he was driving up to his cabin. “I was in the car with my ex-girlfriend at the time, and I pulled over.”
He said she begged him to go to the cabin and start their vacation, but he looked at her and said, “I think I can win the Nobel Prize for this.” The cabin could wait.
Mullis earned his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972.
At first, he described himself as a peptide chemist, which is a chemist who studies and synthesizes proteins. However, this process was quickly becoming automated, and he didn’t want to find himself out of a job. Rather than be replaced by a machine, he decided to go into the expanding field of DNA research.
Mullis then began to work for a company named Cetus. There, Mullis was responsible for producing two short strands of DNA, called oligonucleotides. Mullis said his friend and old co-worker were offered the same job, but spent the time tinkering in his garage for two years working on a machine that could produce two of these short strands a day.
Again faced with losing his job, Mullis needed to come up with a plan.
“I had to figure out something to do with all the extra DNA strands that were being produced,” Mullis said.
Mullis had accidentally discovered PCR, a reaction that could replicate DNA millions or billions of times if needed. This would revolutionize the fields of both microbiology and biochemistry, he said.
Before PCR, testing for genetic diseases took agonizing weeks, and the results were never certain. PCR replicated DNA so that one tiny sample could be “amped up” into thousands of samples that gave a much clearer reading.
It also revolutionized the field of forensics. Mullis almost went on the stand at the O.J. Simpson trial as an expert witness, but the DNA evidence was mishandled by police, making the process impossible.
Mullis said the hardest part of the whole process was getting the technique published in a magazine. The journal he considered most prestigious refused it on the ground that it was “too incredible” and that “the readers would not be interested.”
Mullis joked that now 20 percent of the ad space in that journal is devoted to promoting companies that use his technique.
After the lecture, the students and faculty were invited to a reception to meet Mullis. Students had nothing but good things to say about him.
Julie Uddin, a science scholar, said, “He was different from lecturers here. He did not rely on PowerPoints. He was very personable, and I would love to hear him again.”
Another student, Devin Villiet, said, “Here’s a genius who invented PCR, but there was this ineptness in his mannerisms that reminded us he was human and gave us hope and inspiration that we could attain something as great as he did.”
Two senior students in the Chemistry Club said that Mullis was someone you could have a beer with.
His easygoing personality, which earned him the title of “The Surfing Scientist” in some articles, is only matched by his ingenuity.
The entire experience is best summed up by John Chillari, a science scholar and a member of the Chemistry Club, who said, “He was truly an inspiration, a magnificent man and a magnificent speaker.”