Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (eBook)

Christopher was settling down to some Japanese television when the knock on the door came. It was the imperial security forces and they wanted him downstairs. He dressed and came down to the cocktail party with gray-suited men on either side of him. I spied him in the doorway looking interested but also like a high school student who had been dragged away from the television. He was promptly sent through the receiving line, and the emperor's face lit up when Chris introduced himself in Japanese. It was a memorable night. I was confident I was going to receive the Nobel Prize in 1992. The host of a German TV show had called and explained that each year he did a documentary about the winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and he was preparing the 1992 show. In the past, he had successfully picked every winner of the prize for chemistry. He claimed he was a very good guesser, but I figured this bastard must get inside information, he must be getting the word from somebody on the committee. That means I'm going to win it this year. His TV crew spent a week filming me in La Jolla and Mendocino. I was very excited. And I was actively humble. As it turned out, I had good reason to be humble. I didn't win. I stopped speculating about when I might get it and I tried not to pay attention. About six months before the 1993 awards were to be announced, my mentor from Berkeley, Joe Neilands, from whom I had learned a little bit about chemistry and a whole lot about life, told me, 'I wouldn't be surprised if you got the Nobel Prize this year. But you'd make it easier for the committee to give it to you if you didn't talk to the press so much. They don't have to give it to you till you're dying.' Neilands said that it was probably okay that I admitted loving surfing and women, but he thought the committee might frown on the fact that I admitted using LSD. Surfing, women, and LSD might be too much, he told me. They might decide to wait until I settled down in twenty or thirty years. Joe had spent a sabbatical or two at the Karolinska in Sweden and he knew the scene. We both knew I wouldn't shut up. After being disappointed in 1992, I stopped thinking about the Nobel Prize. The German guy never called back. I wasn't even sure when the awards were to be announced. My phone rang at 6:15 a.m. on the morning of October 13, 1993. I thought I knew who it was. On both the eleventh and twelfth someone from Japan had sent me a fax at exactly that time. He thought it was my afternoon. So when the phone rang in my bedroom I stayed in bed, knowing the fax machine would eventually pick it up. Then I heard someone leaving a message on my answering machine. I heard the words 'Nobel Foundation.' I leaped out of bed. I picked up the phone just as the speaker hung up. Great, I thought, I've missed the Nobel Prize call. Will they call back? Almost instantly the phone rang again. He had heard me just as he'd hung up. 'Congratulations, Dr. Mullis. I am pleased to be able to announce to you that you have been awarded the Nobel Prize.' 'I'll take it!' I said. I knew that they couldn't make you take it and I didn't want there to be any doubts. We talked for a minute, and I was warned to be prepared for an assault by the media, but since this was the first time I'd ever won a Nobel Prize, there was no way I could have anticipated the response. I figured maybe I'd get ten calls or something. I didn't realize how big the known world is. As soon as I hung up, I tried to call my mother in South Carolina. Coincidentally, this was her birthday and I reckoned this was a fine birthday present. But when I picked up the phone, a reporter from the AP was on the...