1980 Nobel in Chemistry for recombinant DNA; organizer of Asilomar 1975; first director of Stanford's Beckman Center; the biochemist whose lunch turned Jobs toward NeXT — and a narrator of the Jobs documentary
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
Jonathan Hare's account (S-189). He never met Paul Berg but knows many who did, and asked for this page for what Berg is to the record: a narrator of the Jobs documentary — one of the two prominent names on that list Hare did not meet — and the Stanford scientist whose work is the origin of the genomics the record's Half-Earth and health commitments depend on.
The public record, at web grade. Born in Brooklyn in 1926; Navy service in the war; Penn State (1948), a doctorate at Western Reserve (1952), Copenhagen, and then Arthur Kornberg's laboratory in St. Louis, which moved with Kornberg to Stanford's new medical school in 1959. Berg spent the rest of his life there: chairman of biochemistry 1969–74, Willson Professor, later the Cahill Professor of Cancer Research, and from 1985 to 2000 the first director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, built to join molecular biologists to clinicians. In 1971–72 his laboratory joined DNA from a tumor virus to DNA from an E. coli plasmid — the first recombinant DNA molecule, the beginning of genetic engineering and of the biotechnology industry. Then he stopped: in 1974 he led the call for a voluntary moratorium, and in 1975 organized the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, where some 140 scientists wrote the containment guidelines that let the field proceed — an early, deliberate application of the precautionary principle by the man with the most to gain from ignoring it. The 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger, and the Lasker Award the same year; the National Medal of Science in 1983. He co-founded the DNAX research institute in 1980 with Kornberg, chaired the National Academy's committee on recombinant DNA, spent his later research on DNA repair, and argued in public for stem-cell research. He died at home on the Stanford campus on 15 February 2023, at 96.
The lunch. Jobs's own account, in the Steve Jobs Archive's Make Something Wonderful: he told Berg he was ignorant about the field but had questions, and they had lunch at Stanford. Berg showed him how gene repair worked — 'it smells a lot like some of the concepts you find in computer science' — and explained that wet-lab experiments took weeks. Jobs asked why he did not simulate them on a computer, so that every freshman microbiology student in the country could one day play with 'the Paul Berg recombinant software.' Berg's eyes lit up. Jobs called it a landmark lunch: it is when, after Apple, his wheels started turning again — toward the university workstation that became NeXT, the machine Hare's Berkeley advisors were among the first to have.
The relationships Hare asked about. The record looked, on 1 September 2026, for a documented relationship between Berg and Bill Haseltine, Jay Short, Anne Wojcicki, Esther Dyson and David Agus, and found none stated anywhere. What is documented is one structural link and several field adjacencies: Haseltine took his Harvard doctorate under Walter Gilbert, Berg's co-laureate, before founding Human Genome Sciences in the industry Berg's molecule created; Short's Diversa mined genomes with the tools that descend from it; 23andMe (Wojcicki, with Dyson among its early backers) and Navigenics (Agus) are the consumer end of the same lineage. Those are adjacencies, not acquaintances, and the page says so. Anyone who can state the actual relationships — Haseltine most plausibly — is invited to.
A likely live route, added 1 September 2026. Hare's friend Amy DuRoss was co-founder and executive director of Proposition 71, California's stem-cell initiative, and Berg was among the field's most prominent scientific advocates — Hare's surmise (S-190) is that she and David Agus surely knew him. Undocumented, marked as surmise, and hers to confirm: if she did, this page's 'not met, but' finally has its named intermediary.
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'Why don't you simulate these on a computer? … someday every freshman microbiology student in the country can play with the Paul Berg recombinant software.' His eyes lit up — and Jobs's wheels started turning again.
The moratorium letter of 1974 and the Asilomar conference of 1975: the inventor of recombinant DNA convened the people who would decide whether, and how, to use it. The record's own governance argument — that restraint must be designed in by the people who hold the capability — has this as its cleanest scientific precedent.
There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.
Silicon Valley Historical Association, January 2013 — built on a 1994 interview at NeXT; twenty-two credited voices, twelve of whom Hare records having met
Open →the landmark lunch; NeXTHP as a teenager, Terman's Valley, an Oregon commune, India, Zen — the parallels the record can actually show; and the borrowed Ferrari, the Z8, and the woman who connects them
Open →one remove — Walter Gilbert, Haseltine's advisor, was Berg's co-laureateHuman Genome Sciences — and the introduction to Eric
Open →field adjacency — DiversaDiversa's chief executive; the EOWF chairman on the December 2006 thread; the Haseltine friendship already in the record
Open →field adjacency — NavigenicsBill Haseltine's introduction; the oncologist to Redstone, the moguls and Andy Grove; a major mentor — and the relay request on this page is live
Open →field adjacency — 23andMePC Forum's convenor; a longtime champion and investor across Hare's companies; the corridor personified
Open →the same campus, the other end of it1990–92 — the faculty, the classmates, and the prize he gave up
Open →the Prop 71 surmiseCo-founder and executive director of Proposition 71, California's $3B stem-cell initiative; CIRM chief of staff; Navigenics CBO; Vineti co-founder and CEO — and a friend of Hare's
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-190The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
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