Recombinant DNA Fermenter, circa 1977

In 1972, University of California, San Francisco, biochemist Herbert Boyer met Stanford University geneticist Stanley Norman Cohen at a meeting in Hawaii. The two then kicked off a collaboration that eventually led to the creation of the first recombinant DNA, a landmark that ushered in the era of modern biotechnology. By combining Cohen's expertise with bacterial plasmids and Boyer's know-how about restriction enzymes, the two found that they could use bacteria as tiny factories for producing many human proteins. Boyer went on to found Genentech in 1976.