When police traced the origins of a red laser dot to the third-floor window of the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, they were surprised to discover that the offending room belonged to Nobel laureate Kary Mullis. The esteemed scientist had been staying in the Swedish capital for days in anticipation of receiving the Nobel Prize and making his laureate speech. Mullis had developed a laboratory technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), in which a small amount of DNA can be copied in large quantities over a short period of time. The discovery was so significant that the New York Times described it as “dividing biology into the two epochs of before PCR and after PCR”.
Mullis, described by his peers as an “untamed genius”, had, from his hotel window, been toying with the Swedes for days. He’d shine the laser beam onto their newspapers, or on the sidewalk in front of them as they walked. A cab driver who. “I thought it was a funny thing to do until the police arrived.”
