Blue-Chips for a Biochemist

In his faded jeans and open leather vest, a can of Budweiser in his hand, he looks like a leftover from the 1960s. Back then, in fact, he marched regularly in the streets of Berkeley, Calif., taking part in civil rights and antiwar demonstrations. Despite his casual look, Herbert Wayne Boyer is a millionaire many times over, at least on paper. More important, he is in the forefront of a new breed of scientist-entrepreneurs who are leading gene splicing out of the university laboratory and into the hurly-burly of industry and commerce.

Boyer's success is a result of brains and foresight, plus a strong independent streak. In 1976, after the first flush of public excitement about gene splicing, Boyer got an unexpected telephone call from Robert Swanson, a young venture capitalist. Swanson wanted to discuss the commercial possibilities of the new science, and many scientists might have kept him at arm's length. Boyer invited Swanson to his lab for a chat but told him he could only spare 20 minutes. The two hit it off so well they went on talking over beers at a local pub for nearly four hours. Recalls Swanson: "All the academics I called said commercial application of gene splicing was ten years away. Herb didn't."

Yielding to Swanson's enthusiasm, Boyer borrowed $500 and joined him in forming a company to exploit the new technology. They dubbed it Genentech (for genetic-engineering technology). As Boyer explains, "He wasn't happy with Boyer & Swanson, and I wasn't happy with Swanson & Boyer." The motives of the two were different. Swanson was 28, with degrees in chemistry and business administration from M.I.T. After several years of seeking out investment opportunities for others, he wanted to show the world he could succeed with a business of his own. Boyer, on the other hand, was interested in getting the new technology out of the lab and using it to do some good. "To me, genetic engineering means design and development for the benefit of mankind."

As Genentech's vice president, Boyer pinpointed promising areas of exploitation and, in his words, "made sure that the scientists were being taken care of and their particular value recognized." Boyer did his job extremely well. Today, after less than five years, Genentech probably has the best research facilities in the gene-splicing business (40 Ph.D.s, 65 technicians). It has produced and is testing half a dozen recombinant DNA products, including insulin, human growth hormone and various types of human interferon. Swanson gives Boyer the highest grades: "For an academic, he's got an incredible sense of what's important from a business standpoint."

Boyer now draws only a consultant's fee for his Genentech work, but he has not exactly gone unrewarded. Like Swanson, he owns 925,000 shares of Genentech stock. Last October, when the stock shot up to $89 a share, he was briefly worth more than $80 million. Currently, with the stock at around $43, the figure is down to a mere $40 million or so. Watching the ebb and flow of this paper fortune, Boyer admits: "It's all a little unreal to me."

Well it might be. Born in 1936 in Derry, Pa. (pop. 3,400), near Pittsburgh, Boyer is the son of a railroad conductor and brakeman. Early on he was more inclined toward football than scholarship. His high school class voted him "most athletic"; his own ambition, he wrote presciently in his yearbook, was "to become a successful businessman." He also developed a taste for science. Encouraged by his hard-driving high school coach, who doubled as a science and math instructor, he went on to pursue those subjects at nearby St. Vincent College, a demanding Benedictine school. A few summers of digging ditches and working in a local Westinghouse transformer plant helped convince him that "I had better start paying attention to what people are saying in class."

For a while Boyer thought of becoming a doctor, but after assisting at an autopsy he decided he did not have the stomach for such work. His interest in genetics was awakened almost accidentally when he was asked one day at St. Vincent to deliver a class report on DNA, which had only recently been firmly established as the molecule that forms genes. Says Boyer: "I got hooked. There was something very beautiful about it. It explained a lot of things." After earning a Ph.D. in bacteriology from the University of Pittsburgh, he did postdoctoral studies at Yale, becoming so immersed in his subject that he named his Siamese cats Watson and Crick. He also became disheartened by public events--the draining agony over the war in Viet Nam, assassinations, racial unrest. "I thought our political system was falling apart. I was ready to go somewhere else and live."

When he began as a researcher at the University of California 14 years ago, he was paid $10,500 a year and told repeatedly, "You'll never get rich in a university." Now that he is a full professor and director of a research team, he earns about $50,000 a year. Though Boyer often works late into the night, he sometimes astonishes the young scientists under him by dropping everything to watch the World Series on TV. He also likes to fish and ski and until a year ago jogged regularly (he has grown chunky since). The only obvious change in Boyer's life-style since Genentech's big splash has been the acquisition of a new champagne-beige Porsche Targa (cost: $40,000). He is married and has two children, but since his sudden riches, he likes to keep them out of the limelight. Even his associates at Genentech do not have his new home phone number.

Although Boyer spends no more than one day a week at Genentech, that involvement has irritated many colleagues. Some will barely talk to him, claiming that he has profited by research done mainly at the university. They believe it is impossible to pursue "pure" research and develop commercial products at the same time. There is even talk that his publicized involvement with Genentech may have cost him a Nobel Prize. But the carping, probably motivated at least in part by jealousy, does not seem to bother Boyer too much. Says he: "If you have a strong conviction that what you're doing is right, then you can stand up against a lot of criticism. "

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