Dancing Naked in the Mind Field

  • Kary Mullis
Pantheon: 1998. 222pp. $24

Mullis earned a place in scientific history in 1983 as the inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which quickly became the indispensable laboratory technique for genetics research. For this achievement, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Beyond that distinction, Mullis stands out for a number of reasons, including behaviour that oscillates between merely eccentric and obnoxious, and utterances that, when not loony, are reminiscent of the child who exclaimed on the emperor's state of undress. He also has an unrestrained penchant for faecal and copulatory terms.

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