Studies of genetic markers had already proved invaluable for evolutionary biology and forensic science,
aided by chemist Kary Mullis's 1983 invention of PCR, an efficient way to amplify minute fragments of DNA.
At the time, physicists and
chemists around the world were rapidly engaged in solving the structures of important biological molecules,
aided enormously
by the development of X-ray crystallography techniques pioneered
by William Astbury.