Herbert W. Boyer has long been one of the leaders in both the science and the business of biotechnology , the engineering of genetic material. It was Boyer, in collaboration with the Stanford biochemist Stanley Cohen, who first cloned , or artificially constructed, new and functional deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from two separate gene sources. Following the work of Paul Berg, who had developed the technique of gene splicing, in 1973 Boyer and Cohen managed to take genes from two bacteria, recombine them, and insert them in another cell which divided itself and reproduced the new genetic material. It was the dawn of a new biological age, one full of potential and fraught with ethical problems.

Herbert Wayne Boyer was born on July 10, 1936, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; his father was a coal miner and railroad worker. He grew up in the nearby town of Derry and attended both grammar and high school there...