The Man Who Took LSD and Changed The World
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as one of the most accessible introductions to PCR and its history.
What it is
Veritasium tells the story of Kary Mullis, the surfer and LSD user who invented PCR and won a Nobel Prize. It explains how PCR works and how it was developed at Cetus.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2024 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec wenc · 2024-12 · on “Intolerable Genius: Berkeley's Most Controversial Nobel Laureate (2019)”
Veritassium did a recent video on Kary Mullis and PCR. It's one of the most accessible videos on PCR I've ever come across (I have no background in biology), and also an interesting history of Kary Mullis. [this video]
Recommends fhe · 2025-01 · on “Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things”
Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology (goodreads link: [LINK] ) for a short video version of this history, see [this video] from Veritasium. reasons for recommendation: - it's an example in the biological science, to complement the heavy representation of examples from computer science and entrepreneurship in this thread - the main character, Kary Mullis, is colorful and controversial. Not a likable individual, but nevertheless had traits (mostly an unreasonable obsession) that enabled him to make such a discovery - the discovery of high temperature tolerant enzymes predated Mullis' insight by some two decades, and it played a key role in making PCR practical and widely applicable. this is a patte
Cites bahador · 2026-04 · on “PCR Is a (Surprisingly) Near-Optimal Technology”
one of the coolest parts about the original inception was the application of taq polymerase. veritasium did a video of about it not too long ago. a friend of mine and a man whom i very much respect was mullis's lab manager at the time. [this video]