Polymerase chain reaction first published. With Randall K. Saiki, Stephen Scharf, Fred Faloona et al. Order of authorship in the original paper was Saiki, Scharf, Faloona, Mullis....

In 1993 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1993 was awarded "for contributions to the developments of methods within DNA-based chemistry." Mullis received half "for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method," and the other half was awarded to Michael Smith "for his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies."

See also No. 7213.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference.)

Improvements that Mullis made to the polymerase chain reaction in 1983 enabled PCR to become a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology. The process was first described by Kjell Kleppe and 1968 Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana. This was Mullis's first "methods" publication on the topic. With F. Faloona, S. Scharf, R. Saiki, G. Horn and H. Erlich.