About Herbert Boyer
Herbert Wayne "Herb" Boyer is an American biotechnologist, researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along with Stanley N. Cohen and Paul Berg, he discovered recombinant DNA, a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, which aided in jump-starting the field of genetic engineering. By 1969, he had performed studies on a couple of restriction enzymes of E. coli with especially useful properties. In 1977, Boyer's laboratory and collaborators Keiichi Itakura and Arthur Riggs at City of Hope National Medical Center described the first-ever synthesis and expression of a peptide-coding gene. In 1976, Boyer founded Genentech with venture capitalist Robert A. Genentech's approach to the first synthesis of insulin won out over Walter Gilbert's approach at Biogen which used whole genes from natural sources.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.