Kary Mullis
Corona del Mar, CA USA
"I'm not any one thing-I'm me. I'm the sum total of all the things that I'm interested in, and I'm interested in a lot."
Career Roadmap
Kary's work combines: Education, Science, and Helping People
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Here's the path I took:
High School
Bachelor's Degree
Chemistry, General
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
Graduate Degree
Biochemistry
University of California-Berkeley
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life has been direct
1.
When he was a boy, he experimented with rocket fuel, sent a frog "into space."
2.
Says he's still that little kid, with a passion for chemistry and inventing.
3.
Went to UC Berkeley for his undergraduate through doctoral studies, then worked in a peptide chemistry lab in San Francisco.
4.
Heard a lecturer say that they'd "fooled" a bacteria into making peptides; realized if bacteria could do it, he didn't want to learn how to make peptides.
5.
Turned his vision towards artificially constructing strands of DNA.
6.
Invented the Polymerase Chain Reaction, which allowed a small strand of DNA to be copied over and over.
7.
Was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for that process.
8.
After his Nobel Prize, it took him a while to figure out what to work on next-taught him there are many paths to go down, you shouldn't limit yourself to just one.
