VOLUME 12, NUMBER 21 • MAY 4, 2001

Baltimore Lecture Will Be Webcast for Campus

Rockefeller alumnus David Baltimore ’64 will present a talk today (May 4) entitled "Is Small Science Over?" as one of the Alumni Reunion events. Although admission to his talk is by ticket only, the campus can view the lecture via Webcast on the university’s Web site.

Nobel laureate David Baltimore’s talk, "Is Small Science Over?" will be webcast today (May 4) at 3:45 p.m.

The live video coverage link will be featured on the homepage (http://www.rockefeller.edu/) in the upper right corner under the Alumni information link. The video will also be linked to the reunion page http://www.rockefeller.edu/reunion.

Baltimore, a former professor and president of The Rockefeller University, is perhaps the most influential biologist of his generation. Awarded the Nobel Prize at the age of 37 for his work in virology, he has also had a profound influence on national science policy regarding such issues as recombinant DNA research and the AIDS epidemic. His accomplishments in multiple areas of expertise–as a researcher, educator, administrator, and public advocate for science and engineering–were instrumental in his selection as the California Institute of Technology’s sixth president.

Baltimore received his bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in 1960 and his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1964. He subsequently held year-long postdoctoral positions at MIT and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, followed by a three-year appointment at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. In 1968, he returned to MIT as an associate professor. He was named full professor in 1972.

At MIT, Baltimore’s early investigations focused on questions about the relationship between DNA and RNA in a cell’s internal functions–specifically, on how cancer-causing RNA viruses manage to infect a healthy cell. One result of this research was the identification of the enzyme reverse transcriptase.

The existence of reverse transcriptase had been hypothesized some years earlier, but the theory was considered far-fetched until June 1970, when Baltimore and Caltech alumnus Howard Temin published back-to-back papers about their independent and simultaneous identification of the enzyme. Baltimore and Temin (and former Caltech faculty member Renato Dulbecco, for other virological research) shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery, which has greatly expanded scientists’ understanding of retroviruses like HIV.

In addition to his research accomplishments, Baltimore has several outstanding administrative and public policy achievements to his credit. In the mid-1970s, he played an important role in creating a consensus on national science policy regarding recombinant DNA research. He served as founding director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT from 1982 until 1990.

Baltimore’s numerous honors include the 1970 Gustave Stern Award in Virology, the 1971 Eli Lilly and Co. Award in Microbiology and Immunology, and the 1999 Medal of Science. An early advocate of federal AIDS research, Baltimore was appointed in 1996 to head the National Institutes of Health AIDS Vaccine Research Committee. He was also a professor at The Rockefeller University from 1990 to 1994, and Rockefeller’s president in 1990—91.

Baltimore’s talk will be Webcast live from Caspary Auditorium at 3:45 p.m.