The idea that would revolutionize biology flashed into the mind of a hippie- holdout biochemist during a midnight drive in 1983. While winding through the mountains of Northern California, Kary Mullis envisioned a way of easily copying a single fragment of DNA in a chain reaction that so surprised him, he pulled his Honda Civic off the road to admire the view in his mind's eye.
Mullis instantly recognized he had solved a problem that had fettered genetic research for decades: the fact that DNA samples are often too meager to work with. He turned to his girlfriend, also a biochemist,...
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