David Baltimore
Nobel laureate & President, California Institute of Technology
David Baltimore is one of the world's most influential biologists.
Awarded the Nobel Prize at the age of 37 for research in virology, he has profoundly
influenced national science policy on such issues as recombinant DNA research and the
AIDS epidemic. He is an accomplished researcher, educator, administrator, and public
advocate for science and engineering. He has been the president of the California
Institute of Technology since 1997.
For almost 30 years, Baltimore was a faculty member at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where he investigated the molecular processes underlying the
ability of the poliovirus to infect cells. This led him to work on other RNA viruses
and then to consider how cancer-causing RNA viruses manage to infect and permanently
alter a healthy cell. He has published more than 600 peer-reviewed articles, and his
work has contributed widely to the understanding of cancer, AIDS, and the molecular
basis of the immune response.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Baltimore has also received the
National Medal of Science and numerous other awards. He is a member of several
learned societies in the U.S. and around the world. He holds a B.A. in chemistry
from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University, where he also
served as president and a member of the faculty.
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