A short life of the author
Kary Banks Mullis (28 December 1944 – 7 August 2019) was an American biochemist who invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), arguably the single most important technique in modern molecular biology, and who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 for this achievement. He was also, by any measure, one of the most eccentric, controversial, and entertaining scientists of the twentieth century. His memoir Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (1998) reads like no other book by a Nobel laureate: it is a freewheeling, often hilarious, occasionally alarming collection of essays in which Mullis describes the invention of PCR, his experiences with LSD, his belief in astrology, his skepticism about HIV causing AIDS, his encounter with a glowing raccoon that he believes may have been an alien, and his general conviction that most of what the scientific establishment believes is wrong. The book is simultaneously brilliant and irresponsible, and it is never dull.
Life and Career
Mullis was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, and grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. He was a self-described troublemaker from childhood — he built rockets and explosives as a teenager, nearly blinding himself on multiple occasions. He studied chemistry at Georgia Tech and earned his PhD in biochemistry from UC Berkeley in 1973. He worked at various biotech companies, most significantly at Cetus Corporation in Emeryville, California, where, in 1983, he conceived the idea for PCR.
The insight came to him, famously, while driving along Highway 128 in Mendocino County on a Friday night. He has described the moment in vivid detail: the hairpin turns, the moonlit redwoods, and the sudden realisation that by using a heat-stable DNA polymerase and repeated cycles of heating and cooling, he could exponentially amplify any specific sequence of DNA from a tiny sample. The idea was so simple and so powerful that Mullis could not believe no one had thought of it before.
PCR transformed biology. Before Mullis, working with DNA required large samples and laborious procedures. PCR made it possible to take a single molecule of DNA and amplify it billions of times in a few hours. The technique is the foundation of modern genetic testing, forensic DNA analysis, the Human Genome Project, medical diagnostics for infectious disease, paternity testing, ancient DNA analysis, and — most recently — the COVID-19 testing that dominated public life during the pandemic. It is not an exaggeration to say that PCR is one of the most consequential inventions of the twentieth century.
Mullis received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993, sharing it with Michael Smith. He left bench science shortly after and spent the rest of his life surfing, lecturing, consulting, and cultivating his reputation as a scientific maverick.
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (1998)
The book is a collection of essays — some scientific, some autobiographical, some purely eccentric — that range from Mullis’s account of inventing PCR to his views on astrology (he believes in it), LSD (he credits it with contributing to his scientific creativity), the ozone hole (he’s skeptical), global warming (also skeptical), and HIV (he denied that HIV was the cause of AIDS, a position that was scientifically indefensible and that caused real harm by giving ammunition to AIDS denialists in South Africa and elsewhere).
The writing is vivid, irreverent, and disarmingly honest. Mullis has the storyteller’s gift: he makes you laugh, he makes you think, and then he says something that makes you wonder whether he has entirely lost his mind. The essay about the glowing raccoon — which Mullis encountered near his cabin in Mendocino County and which he believes may have been some kind of extraterrestrial entity — is the book’s most notorious passage, and it is typical of Mullis’s refusal to distinguish between genuine scientific curiosity and uncritical credulity.
Controversy
Mullis’s AIDS denialism was the most damaging of his heterodox positions. He argued publicly that HIV had never been proven to cause AIDS, that the disease was caused by recreational drug use and other factors, and that the scientific establishment had suppressed dissenting views. These claims were wrong — the evidence linking HIV to AIDS is overwhelming — and they were embraced by denialist politicians, most notably in South Africa, where they contributed to policies that may have cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
His other heterodox positions — astrology, climate skepticism, his general distrust of scientific consensus — were less harmful but equally frustrating to colleagues who admired his scientific achievement and wished he would stop embarrassing them.
Critical Standing
Mullis is a paradox: one of the most important scientific minds of the twentieth century and one of its most unreliable public intellectuals. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field is a fascinating, infuriating book — valuable as an account of scientific creativity, dangerous as a guide to anything else. PCR changed the world; Mullis’s opinions on everything except PCR should be approached with extreme caution.
Collecting Mullis
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (1998, Pantheon) in first edition brings $30–$80. Signed copies are available — Mullis was a gregarious public figure who enjoyed meeting people — and bring $100–$250. Nobel Prize–related ephemera (signed programs, lecture reprints) are collected by science historians.