Reading about Dr. Mullis’ discovery of PCR is something that makes the process of scientific discovery as a whole more accessible. For pretty much my whole academic career, I was taught and believed that scientific discoveries come from lab work and research. While that is completely true, hearing about how Dr. Mullis’ got the core idea for developing PCR while driving on a windy back mountain road takes a concept that is unfamiliar to me (scientific discovery), and displays it in a manner I am familiar with (getting lost in my thoughts while driving). Dr. Mullis humanized science to me, by displaying a rather intimate moment of it as opposed to just being a patent proposal or journal article.
