Nobel laureate David Baltimore dies at 87 Baltimore found that genetic materials of tumor viruses might make DNA from their RNA genome

David Baltimore, co-recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and president emeritus and the Judge Shirley Hufstedler Professor of Biology at Caltech, died on Sept. 6. He was 87.

Baltimore led a multifaceted profession and life as an internationally influential researcher, chief in larger training and public coverage, and devoted mentor, colleague, buddy, father, and husband.

“David Baltimore’s contributions as a virologist, discerning fundamental mechanisms and applying those insights to immunology, to cancer, to AIDS, have transformed biology and medicine,” says Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics. “David’s profound influence as a mentor to generations of students and postdocs, his generosity as a colleague, his leadership of great scientific institutions, and his deep involvement in international efforts to define ethical boundaries for biological advances fill out an extraordinary intellectual life.”

Baltimore was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery that the genetic materials of tumor viruses might make DNA from their RNA genome, altering the extensively held notion that genetic info might solely be transferred in a single course, from DNA to RNA. Baltimore’s analysis contributed to the understanding of the molecular foundation of the immune response and formed advances in biotechnology and the event of nationwide science coverage relating to recombinant DNA analysis and the AIDS epidemic.

More not too long ago, his analysis was centered on investigating the event and performance of the mammalian immune system and on growing viral vectors that may carry genes into cells to extend the vary of ailments (from most cancers to HIV to influenza) the physique can successfully combat.

Beyond his contributions to science, Baltimore was a outstanding higher-education chief and science-policy advocate. Baltimore served as Caltech’s seventh president from 1997 to 2006, a tenure marked by the completion of a fundraising initiative for the organic sciences, the development and dedication of the Broad Center for the Biological Sciences, and the launch of a $1.4 billion capital marketing campaign. His presidency additionally featured many profitable area and planetary missions on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech for NASA, notably the Mars Exploration Rovers.

“David brought to Caltech scientific eminence and an ambitious vision for the future that he was uniquely qualified to realize,” says David W. Thompson (MS ‘78), chair of the Caltech Board of Trustees.” He elevated the Institute’s stature globally together with his means to have interaction audiences spanning a variety of pursuits and efficiently oversaw two high-impact fundraising campaigns that superior analysis throughout disciplines, enhanced training, and outlined the campus’s panorama. His legacy will echo by our halls for generations to come back.” 

As president, Baltimore labored towards growing variety at Caltech, significantly by bringing extra girls into administrative roles and, with an curiosity in enhancing high quality of undergraduate life, appointed the primary full-time vp for pupil affairs and began a $3 million fund for supporting student-life actions and companies.

“During my time in the president’s office, I have worked to keep Caltech the unique and highly effective university that was imagined into existence by George Ellery Hale almost 100 years ago,” Baltimore wrote in a notice to campus when asserting his retirement in 2005. “Its dedication to excellence has been undiminished, requiring that it continually be in flux, reaching for the altering frontiers of knowledge.”

Baltimore’s private sentiments are echoed within the reminiscences and reflections of colleagues who recounted his insatiable curiosity and pursuit of recent information, intuition to determine and foster brilliance, and a deep and private dedication to the individuals he surrounded himself with and the establishments the place he devoted his time.

“Looking at the many chapters of David’s scientific life beginning as an undergraduate at Swarthmore, through times at MIT, the Salk, Rockefeller, and ultimately at Caltech, the through-line aspiration was the rigorous pursuit of what is new, true, and fundamental—in his own work and in the work of others. Mostly he succeeded, and when he did not, he always learned,” says Barbara Wold (PhD ‘78), Caltech’s Bren Professor of Molecular Biology and Merkin Institute Professor. “At Caltech, as our president and as a professor of the biology and biological engineering division, he often saw in people possibilities they did not see in themselves.”

Paul Sternberg, Bren Professor of Biology and the William Okay. Bowes Jr. Leadership Chair of the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, provides, “From a personal perspective, I knew David from my graduate student years at MIT and then for several decades at Caltech. What I remember most was his continual willingness to share his wisdom and exquisite intellectual taste. There are hundreds of scientists who benefited from his attention.” 

Baltimore started his PhD in 1960 at MIT, with a deal with finding out bacteriophages, viruses that infect and replicate inside micro organism. But after a summer season course on animal virology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Baltimore transferred to The Rockefeller University to work with Richard Franklin, a pioneer within the molecular biology of animal viruses.

By 1970, after engaged on the replication of RNA viruses similar to polio- and mengovirus for a number of years, viruses that make RNA copies of their RNA genomes to copy, Baltimore started to research whether or not one other class of RNA viruses, retroviruses, accommodates an enzyme that produces a DNA copy of the viral RNA. To affirm this, he carried out an experiment to exhibit the existence of this viral enzyme, reverse transcriptase, so named as a result of it reversed the then-assumed course of genetic info (DNA to RNA to protein). This experiment would turn into the premise of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine he was awarded in 1975 together with former Caltech college member Renato Dulbecco and Howard Temin (PhD ‘60), who completed his doctoral studies in Dulbecco’s lab.

“The experiment is an exemplar of elegance and simplicity,” says Baltimore’s Caltech colleague Carlos Lois, analysis professor of biology. “In a single stroke, David demonstrated that genetic information can flow from RNA to DNA, something that had been considered to be impossible for more than 20 years. It is a testament to David’s acumen that he had never worked with retroviruses before! For this experiment, he requested purified retroviral particles from a core facility at the National Institutes of Health. The viruses were sent to him by mail, and he did the experiment. So, the first time that he had ever worked with retroviruses, he did an experiment that got him a Nobel Prize.”

The discovery of reverse transcriptase enabled laboratories all through the world to check the molecular biology of retroviruses. When the AIDS pandemic began within the early Nineteen Eighties, the scientific group was capable of quickly determine HIV—a retrovirus—as its trigger. Additionally, the biotechnology revolution of the early Nineteen Eighties was a direct consequence of the appliance of reverse transcriptase to clone and manipulate genes. 

After the invention of reverse transcriptase, Baltimore continued to work with retroviruses for a number of years earlier than turning his focus to immunology. His laboratory first found one of many main regulators for inflammatory processes: a protein referred to as NFkappaB, the dysregulation of which is implicated in lots of types of autoimmune ailments and most cancers. Additionally, his college students found the genes chargeable for the manufacturing of antibody variety, permitting researchers to know on the molecular stage how the genome of an animal can generate billions of various antibodies.

“Throughout his career, David demonstrated a rare trait among scientists: intellectual agility,” Lois says. “Whenever he thought that there were important questions that were ready to be attacked, he jumped into the field even if he had never worked in that area before.”

Lois was a postdoctoral fellow in Baltimore’s laboratory at Caltech from 1996 to 2002. “Joining his lab was a very formative experience,” Lois recollects. “In the lab meetings, you could, on the same afternoon, hear about the effects of an oncogene, memory cells for the immune system, rearrangements of the genome, the structure of a protein domain, the control of repair of DNA damage, or the signal cascades implicated in cell death. Every lab meeting was an opportunity to learn something new from the people who were doing the leading research on the topic. I have never seen, before or after that, a group of people more motivated and driven to do science. The atmosphere in the lab was electrifying, and it was tremendously inspiring to be surrounded by such intellectually ambitious people.”

After his retirement from the Caltech presidency in 2006, Baltimore remained on the Institute to proceed his educating and his scientific analysis. Among different work, Baltimore established a brand new methodology to assist combat most cancers, developed a brand new extremely efficient gene remedy to forestall HIV from infecting particular person cells within the immune system, and created a brand new methodology for producing transgenic mice. He additionally joined with others in pursuing a worldwide effort to create an HIV vaccine. In 2005, he was awarded a $13.9 million grant by the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for his proposal to “engineer immunity” towards HIV and different continual illness pathogens.

“David Baltimore will go down in history as not only a great scientist but also as one of the great presidents of Caltech,” stated entrepreneur, philanthropist, and late Caltech trustee Eli Broad, when Baltimore’s retirement was introduced. “It is rare to find someone of his intelligence, integrity, and leadership who can relate so well to people both within and outside the world of science.”

Baltimore was energetic in public coverage all through his profession. In the Nineteen Seventies, he performed an instrumental position in shaping nationwide science coverage relating to recombinant DNA analysis, serving as co-organizer of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA held in 1975, and he was an early advocate of federal AIDS analysis. In 1986, he co-chaired the National Academy of Sciences committee on a National Strategy for AIDS and, in 1996, was appointed to go the National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS Vaccine Research Committee, which turned often called “the Baltimore Committee” and is now an NIH subcommittee. He labored with the NIH whereas director of the Whitehead Institute at MIT, serving to the federal government set up tips for the Human Genome Project.

After the 2000 presidential election, Baltimore established the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project together with MIT President Charles Vest. The group was fashioned of political scientists, economists, and engineers to handle challenges in how elections are performed. The workforce testified to Congress, ensuing within the passing of the Help America Vote Act in 2002.

In 2015, he was amongst an acclaimed group of scientists who referred to as for a worldwide moratorium on the use of genome-editing techniques to alter inheritable human DNA; in 2018, he chaired the organizing committee for the second such summit.

“It’s part of my general belief that modern medicine will have the ability to ameliorate much of the burden of the diseases that we still suffer with as human beings, like cancer, inherited disease, heart disease,” Baltimore stated in an interview after the 2018 summit. “I’m hopeful that we will ameliorate those and that the world will become, in that sense, a better place because of modern biology.”

Baltimore was born on March 7, 1938, in New York City. He acquired his BA in chemistry with excessive honors from Swarthmore College in 1960 and his PhD in biology from The Rockefeller University in 1964. He joined MIT as an affiliate professor in 1968, turned a professor in 1972, and was named American Cancer Society Research Professor in 1973. In 1974, he joined the workers of the MIT Center for Cancer Research and was a founding director of the Whitehead Institute in 1982, the place he served as director till 1990. He was president of Rockefeller from 1990 to 1991 and a member of the Rockefeller college till 1994, when he rejoined the MIT college till he assumed the presidency of Caltech in October of 1997.

Among different honors and awards, Baltimore was the recipient of the National Medal of Science (1999), the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology (1974), the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize (2000), the Eli Lilly and Co. Award in Microbiology and Immunology (1971), the Gustav Stern Award in Virology (1970), and the Lasker~Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science (2021).

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Institute of Immunologists, changing into a Distinguished Fellow in 2019; as well as, he was a overseas member of the Royal Society of London and the French Academy of Sciences. From 2007 to 2008, he served because the president and chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He acquired honorary doctorates in science from Mount Sinai Medical Center, the University of Helsinki, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Columbia University, Yale University, The Rockefeller University, Harvard University, the University of Alabama, California Polytechnic State University, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Swarthmore College, Bard College, and Mount Holyoke College.

David’s profound affect as a mentor to generations of scholars and postdocs, his generosity as a colleague, his management of nice scientific establishments, and his deep involvement in worldwide efforts to outline moral boundaries for organic advances fill out a unprecedented mental life.

Thomas F. Rosenbaum

In 2006, in honor of his mom, Baltimore established the Gertrude Baltimore Chair in Experimental Psychology. In 2017, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation established the David Baltimore Professorship in Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech, a title which is at the moment held by Pamela Bjorkman.

“David was generous,” says Elliot Meyerowitz, the George W. Beadle Professor of Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. “His knowledge of biology was profound and he shared it freely, along with his experience, his advice, and his time. His experience was massive, not only in science, but as a leader and builder of universities, companies, and laboratories, including his extremely successful time as president of Caltech. He was always happy to give advice when asked. David was extremely generous with his time, always stopping to discuss, to advise, and to share his knowledge—not only scientific, but also of the latest restaurants, of books and concerts he enjoyed—despite being more busy than most of us could imagine. David and Alice were generous and stimulating hosts, both at Caltech and at their home in Pasadena. He will be sorely missed by all of us.”

Thomas Palfrey, the Flintridge Foundation Professor of Economics and Political Science, Emeritus, who first met Baltimore throughout the presidential search course of and later once more labored intently with him because the Caltech lead of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, maintained an in depth friendship with Baltimore over a long time. “One thing, obviously, he was a brilliant scientist—one of the greatest scientists of his generation, a university leader, and important in public service. Everyone knows about that,” Palfrey says. “But what they probably don’t know is how diverse and broad his interests were: music, classical, jazz, art, wine, exceptional food. He led a very multifaceted life, one of these people who put his foot on the accelerator and never let up his whole life. The amount of things that he did—traveling for pleasure and work—were mind-boggling. I think that it’s important to know that he did all sorts of things as a person as well as scientist. He cared about his friends, and he cared about the world. A lot of his work was trying to improve the human condition. He should be remembered for that.”

Baltimore is survived by Alice Huang, a senior college affiliate in biology at Caltech and his spouse of 56 years, and by their daughter, TK Baltimore.

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The writer is the content material and media strategist within the Office of Communications and External Relations at CalTech Magazine