Peter Lobban first proposed the idea of recombinant DNA as a Stanford graduate student, Paul Berg's laboratory produced the first recombinant DNA molecule around 1971-72 and Berg later won a Nobel Prize partly for this work, yet the 1974 United States patent on recombinant DNA technology names only Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer as inventors, for a related but distinct gene-cloning technique published in 1973.
What would resolve this A settled historical or legal consensus on whether patent inventorship (Cohen and Boyer's cloning technique) or first scientific priority (Lobban's proposal and Berg's molecule) is the correct measure of who invented recombinant DNA would resolve the dispute.
OpenHistory of biotechnology and biological engineeringRecombinant DNA (Wikipedia)