Dancing Naked in the Mind Field

Zusatztext "Delightful . . . joyous . . . an autobiography of the nervous system of an extraordinary chemist."         -- The New York Times Book Review "One of the most mind-stretching and inspirational books I've read for a long time."         --Arthur C. Clarke "Kary Mullis! perhaps the weirdest human ever to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry! [has written] a chatty! rambling! funny! iconoclastic tour through the wonderland that is [his] mind." -- The Washington Post Informationen zum Autor Kary Mullis lives in La Jolla and Anderson Valley, California. Klappentext Here is a multidimensional playland of ideas from the world's most eccentric Nobel-Prize winning scientist. Kary Mullis is legendary for his invention of PCR, which redefined the world of DNA, genetics, and forensic science. He is also a surfer, a veteran of Berkeley in the sixties, and perhaps the only Nobel laureate to describe a possible encounter with aliens. A scientist of boundless curiosity, he refuses to accept any proposition based on secondhand or hearsay evidence, and always looks for the "money trail" when scientists make announcements. Mullis writes with passion and humor about a wide range of topics: from global warming to the O. J. Simpson trial, from poisonous spiders to HIV, from scientific method to astrology. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field challenges us to question the authority of scientific dogma even as it reveals the workings of an uncannily original scientific mind.From Chapter One Christopher was settling down to some Japanese television when the knock on the door came. It was the imperial security forces and they wanted him downstairs. He dressed and came down to the cocktail party with gray-suited men on either side of him. I spied him in the doorway looking interested but also like a high school student who had been dragged away from the television. He was promptly sent through the receiving line, and the emperor's face lit up when Chris introduced himself in Japanese. It was a memorable night.         I was confident I was going to receive the Nobel Prize in 1992. The host of a German TV show had called and explained that each year he did a documentary about the winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and he was preparing the 1992 show. In the past, he had successfully picked every winner of the prize for chemistry. He claimed he was a very good guesser, but I figured this bastard must get inside information, he must be getting the word from somebody on the committee. That means I'm going to win it this year. His TV crew spent a week filming me in La Jolla and Mendocino. I was very excited. And I was actively humble.         As it turned out, I had good reason to be humble. I didn't win. I stopped speculating about when I might get it and I tried not to pay attention. About six months before the 1993 awards were to be announced, my mentor from Berkeley, Joe Neilands, from whom I had learned a little bit about chemistry and a whole lot about life, told me, "I wouldn't be surprised if you got the Nobel Prize this year. But you'd make it easier for the committee to give it to you if you didn't talk to the press so much. They don't have to give it to you till you're dying."         Neilands said that it was probably okay that I admitted loving surfing and women, but he thought the committee might frown on the fact that I admitted using LSD. Surfing, women, and LSD might be too much, he told me. They might decide to wait until I settled down in twenty or thirty years. Joe had spent a sabbatical or two at the Karolinska in Sweden and he knew the scene. We both knew I wouldn't shut up.         After being disappointed in 1992, I stopped thinking about the Nobel Prize. The German guy never called back. I wasn't even sure when the awards were to be announced. My phone rang at 6:15 a.m. on the morning of October 13, 1993. I thought I knew who it was. O...

Product details

• Authors: Kary Mullis
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 04.01.2000
• EAN: 9780679774006
• ISBN: 978-0-679-77400-6
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 146 mm x 216 mm x 19 mm
• Subject: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies