His entire childhood was spent in South Carolina and he completed his schooling from Dreher High School. Kary also shared his love for chemistry and he revealed that at a very young age, he learned a lot about solid state rocket engines. He later went to Georgia Institute of Technology to complete his education.

He also pursued Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. The research paper of his doctorate was about bacterial iron transporter molecules. He also attended University of Kanas to learn about cardiology and finally he went to the University of California again to learn about pharmaceutical chemistry.

As per the records, Kary worked as a fictional writer and he even worked at a bakery before coming back to science. Kary started working for Cetus Corporation and he was working as DNA Chemist. He worked for this company for 7 years. He left the company in 1986 to join Xytronyx. He worked as a director for the company.

He later joined a hospital research institute. He won several awards during his career for the inventions he made. He invented/"discovered" PCR and he was also awarded a huge sum of money primarily from winning the Japan Prize and sharing the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1993. It is known that his work transformed the fields of genetics, forensic science, biochemistry and even molecular biology. It is also known that Kary invented a plastic which was capable of changing its color in presence of Ultra Violet light.Kary's last wife and the love of his life is Nancy Cosgrove Mullis. It is known that in total, Kary married four times in his life and he is the father of three children. It is also known that Kary used LSD but he later left the use of LSD. He also claimed that LSD helped him during his research.

In 1985, he reported that he saw a glowing raccoon in the forest. It was believed to be an alien but most of the people ignored the news as they thought that Kary was on another LSD trip which made him hallucinate this. He also wrote his own autobiography and he doesn’t support major issues like climate change, HIV being the cause of AIDS, depletion of ozone layers etc. he believes that these things are a conspiracy in which government is involved. People often find it bizarre to hear such statements from a Nobel Prize Winner. There is no information about the total annual salary or about the net worth of Kary.