Remembering David Baltimore, influential biologist and founding director of the Whitehead Institute | MIT Information

The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research fondly remembers its founding director, David Baltimore, a former MIT Institute Professor and Nobel laureate who died Sept. 6 at age 87.

With discovery after discovery, Baltimore dropped at gentle key options of biology with direct implications for human well being. His work at MIT earned him a share of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco) for locating reverse transcriptase and figuring out retroviruses, which use RNA to synthesize viral DNA.

Following the award, Baltimore reoriented his laboratory’s focus to pursue a mixture of immunology and virology. Among the lab’s most vital subsequent discoveries had been the identification of a pair of proteins that play a vital function in enabling the immune system to create antibodies for thus many various molecules, and investigations into how sure viruses could cause cell transformation and most cancers. Work from Baltimore’s lab additionally helped result in the event of the essential most cancers drug Gleevec — the primary small molecule to focus on an oncoprotein inside cells.

In 1982, Baltimore partnered with philanthropist Edwin C. “Jack” Whitehead to conceive and launch the Whitehead Institute after which served as its founding director till 1990. Within a decade of its founding, the Baltimore-led Whitehead Institute was named the world’s prime analysis establishment in molecular biology and genetics.

“More than 40 years later, Whitehead Institute is thriving, still guided by the strategic vision that David Baltimore and Jack Whitehead articulated,” says Phillip Sharp, MIT Institute Professor Emeritus, former Whitehead board member, and fellow Nobel laureate. “Of all David’s myriad and significant contributions to science, his role in building the first independent biomedical research institute associated with MIT and guiding it to extraordinary success may well prove to have had the broadest and longest-term impact.” 

Ruth Lehmann, director and president of the Whitehead Institute, and professor of biology at MIT, says: “I, like many others, owe my career to David Baltimore. He recruited me to Whitehead Institute and MIT in 1988 as a faculty member, taking a risk on an unproven, freshly-minted PhD graduate from Germany. As director, David was incredibly skilled at bringing together talented scientists at different stages of their careers and facilitating their collaboration so that the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts. This approach remains a core strength of Whitehead Institute.”

As a part of the Whitehead Institute’s mission to domesticate the subsequent era of scientific leaders, Baltimore based the Whitehead Fellows program, which offers terribly proficient current PhD and MD graduates with the chance to launch their very own labs, fairly than to enter conventional postdoctoral positions. The program has been an enormous success, with former fellows occurring to excel as leaders in analysis, training, and trade.

David Page, MIT professor of biology, Whitehead Institute member, and former director who was the Institute’s first fellow, remembers, “David was both an amazing scientist and a peerless leader of aspiring scientists. The launching of the Whitehead Fellows program reflected his recipe for institutional success: gather up the resources to allow young scientists to realize their dreams, recruit with an eye toward potential for outsized impact, and quietly mentor and support without taking credit for others’ successes — all while treating junior colleagues as equals. It is a beautiful strategy that David designed and executed magnificently.”

Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT and a member of the Whitehead Institute Board of Directors, says that “David was a scientific hero for so many. He was one of those remarkable individuals who could make stellar scientific breakthroughs and lead major institutions with extreme thoughtfulness and grace. He will be missed by the whole scientific community.”

“David was a wise giant. He was brilliant. He was an extraordinarily effective, ethical leader and institution builder who influenced and inspired generations of scientists and premier institutions,” says Susan Whitehead, member of the board of administrators and daughter of Jack Whitehead.

Gerald R. Fink, the Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor Emeritus at MIT who was recruited by Baltimore from Cornell University as considered one of 4 founding members of the Whitehead Institute, and who succeeded him as director in 1990, observes: “David became my hero and friend. He upheld the highest scientific ideals and instilled trust and admiration in all around him.”