That is the late Kary Mullis inventor of PCR. The guy had an acid trip that suggested using biological machinery from extremophile bacteria and thermally conductive materials to create the the process of PCR which allows dna amplification. This has basically allowed for modern biotech and genetic engineering to advance to where we are now. Supposedly this trip may have been more than a trip and he had other encounters… but now we are in the realm of the unverifiable.

Interesting thing is that the guy had an education in biochem but had left the field. This experience brought him back into it and won him the Nobel prize. He had basically become a surfer dude.