Kary Mullis - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Mullis was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, on December 28, 1944. His family had a background in farming in this rural area. As a child, Mullis recalls, he was interested in observing organisms in the countryside. He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, where he attended Dreher High School.

Mullis earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, during which time he got married and started a business. He then received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972; his research focused on synthesis and structure of proteins. Following his graduation, Mullis became a postdoctoral fellow in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical School, going on to complete two years of postdoctoral work in pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Read more about this topic:  Kary Mullis

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:

    “... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    “If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
    —Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)

    “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
    —Bible: New Testament, Matthew 6:25.26.

    Jesus.

    “The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is as true for first graders as graduate students, for fledging artists as graying accountants.”
    —Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)