Biochemists Herbert Boyer (UCSF) and Paul Berg (Stanford) at a conference at Asilomar, February 26, 1975. San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images/Hearst Newspapers
San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images/Hearst Newspapers
The year was 1975, before cell phones and email became ubiquitous, and Alex Capron remembers watching scientists lining up at a payphone during breaks at a conference.
The payphone was in the main lodge of a conference center at Asilomar State Beach in California, and Capron says the scientists were mostly calling colleagues back at home to tell them about advances in genetic engineering that they’d