Paul Rabinow

Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology

Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996.

QP606.D46.R33 1996 Anthropology Library

Making PCR explores the culture of biotechnology not only as it emerged at Cetus Corporation, but also as an industry spawned by the particular elements found in northern California's Bay Area in the 1970's. "In Making PCR, Paul Rabinow provides a succint account of the development of PCR—a powerful means for making copies of specific DNA sequences in vitro. Drawing on documentary evidence and interviews with former personnel of the Cetus Corporation, which developed PCR, he explores the highly nonlinear path to its invention... His ethnographic approach nicely portrays some of the excitement and intensity of doing science in the fast-paced world of biotechnology start-ups in the 1980's."

From: Stephen Hilgartner 1996 review of "Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology."
Science, Nov. 8, vol. 274, p. 934-935.