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So I'm thrilled about that. I really feel that at last we're entering a whole new era and that the people that developed recombinant DNA, Lasker Award winners -- Paul Berg, Stanley Cohen, Paul Boyer -- these men developed the ideas and the practical technology for gene splicing, and they will be considered, I think, in our century as Pasteur was considered: the genius of the 19th century. He caused the greatest number of new ideas to be circulated.

Well, it certainly was a timely group of awards then, wasn't it?

It certainly was. It was a lucky group of awards. After We decided on the award to Paul Berg, the Nobel Prize decided on him, but neither Boyer nor Stanley Cohen were given a Nobel Prize, much as I think they deserve one. Strangely enough, both of them have given their basic patents -- one, Boyer, to the University of California at San Francisco, and Cohen to Stanford -- and they've given their universities their basic patents on recombinant DNA forever. And Stanford University is now selling the use of the patents at $10,000 plus a percentage of the gross or the net of whoever buys the license.

Well, what about the scientists themselves?

The scientists themselves receiver nothings as far as I know.