| 14th | Top National Medal of Science laureates |
| 138th | Top Long Islanders |
| David Baltimore | |
|---|---|
 David L. Baltimore
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| Born | 7
March 1938 New York City, New York, USA |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Biology |
| Institutions | Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Rockefeller University California Institute of Technology |
| Alma mater | Swarthmore
College Rockefeller University |
| Known for | Reverse transcriptase |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1975) |
David L. Baltimore (born 7 March 1938) is an American biologist, university administrator, and Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He served as president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1997 to 2006, and is currently the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech. He also served as president of Rockefeller University from 1990 to 1991, and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. As is traditional in the AAAS, he now serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
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Baltimore was born to Gertrude Lipschitz and Richard Baltimore in New York City. He graduated from Great Neck High School in 1956, and credits his interest in biology to a high-school summer spent at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.[1][2] He earned a BA at Swarthmore College in 1960, and received his Ph.D. at Rockefeller University in 1964. After postdoctoral fellowships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a non-faculty research position at the Salk Institute, he joined the MIT faculty in 1968.
In 1975, at the age of 37, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco. The citation reads, "for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell." At the time, Baltimore's greatest contribution to virology was his discovery of reverse transcriptase (RTase or RT). Reverse transcriptase is essential for the reproduction of retroviruses such as HIV and was also discovered independently, and at about the same time, by Mizutani and Temin.[3]
Also in 1975, Baltimore was an organizer of the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA. In 1982, Baltimore was appointed the founding director of MIT's Whitehead Institute, where he remained through June 1990.
In 1981, Baltimore and Vincent Racaniello, a post-doctoral fellow in his laboratory, used recombinant DNA technology to generate a plasmid encoding the genome of poliovirus, an animal RNA virus. The plasmid DNA was introduced into cultured mammalian cells and infectious poliovirus was produced.[4] The infectious clone, DNA encoding the genome of a virus, is a standard tool used today in virology. Other important breakthroughs from Baltimore's lab include the discovery the transcription factor NF-kB and the recombination activating genes RAG-1 and RAG-2.
Baltimore became president of Rockefeller University in New York City on 1 July, 1990. After resigning on 3 December 1991, Baltimore remained on the Rockefeller University faculty and continued research until spring of 1994. He then rejoined the MIT faculty.
Baltimore has influenced national policy concerning recombinant DNA research and the AIDS epidemic. He has trained many doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, several of whom have gone on to notable and distinguished research careers. Baltimore is a member of The Jackson Laboratory's Board of Trustees, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors, the National Academy of Sciences USA (NAS), the NAS Institute of Medicine (IOM), Amgen, Inc. Board of Directors, the BB Biotech AG Board of Directors, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS Vaccine Research Committee (AVRC), and numerous other organizations and their boards. He is married to Alice S. Huang.
By 1996, the New York Times called the Imanishi-Kari case "The fraud case that evaporated," after an appeals panel found that "the Government failed to prove any of the 19 charges leveled against Dr. Imanishi-Kari."[5][6] But during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the case was a cause celebre, spawning extensive news coverage and a Congressional investigation. The case was linked to Baltimore's name because of his scientific collaboration with and later his strong defense of Imanishi-Kari against accusations of fraud.
In 1986, while a Professor of Biology at MIT and Director at Whitehead, Baltimore co-authored a scientific paper on immunology with Thereza Imanishi-Kari (an Assistant Professor of Biology who had her own laboratory at MIT) as well as four others.[7] A postdoctoral fellow in Imanishi-Kari's laboratory, Margot O'Toole, who was not an author, reported concerns about the paper, ultimately accusing Imanishi-Kari of fabricating data in a cover-up. Baltimore, however, refused to retract the paper.
O'Toole soon dropped her challenge, but the NIH, which had funded the contested paper's research, began investigating. Representative John Dingell (D-MI) also aggressively pursued it, eventually calling in U.S. Secret Service (USSS; U.S. Treasury) document examiners.[8]
In a draft report dated March 14, 1991 and based mainly on USSS forensics findings, NIH's fraud unit, then called the Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), accused Imanishi-Kari of falsifying and fabricating data. It also criticized Baltimore for failing to embrace O'Toole's challenge. Less than a week later, the report was leaked to the press.[9] Baltimore and three co-authors then retracted the paper; Imanishi-Kari and Moema H. Reis did not sign the retraction.[10]
Amid concerns raised by negative publicity in connection with the scandal, Baltimore resigned as president of Rockefeller University[11] and rejoined the MIT Biology faculty.[12]
In July 1992, the US Attorney for the District of MD, who had been investigating the case, announced he would bring neither criminal nor civil charges against Imanishi-Kari.[13] In October 1994, however, OSI's successor, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI; HHS) found Imanishi-Kari guilty on 19 counts of research misconduct, basing its conclusions largely on Secret Service analysis of laboratory notebooks.
An HHS appeals panel began meeting in June 1995 to review all charges in detail. In June 1996, the panel ruled that the ORI had failed to prove even one of its 19 charges. Citing repeated instances where Dr. O'Toole's allegations were "not credible", the panel dismissed all charges against Imanishi-Kari. Furthermore, as their final report stated, the HHS panel "found that much of what ORI presented was irrelevant, had limited probative value, was internally inconsistent, lacked reliability or foundation, was not credible or not corroborated, or was based on unwarranted assumptions." Neither OSI nor ORI ever accused Baltimore of research misconduct.[14][15]
Baltimore has been both praised and criticized for his actions in this matter.[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Historian of science Daniel Kevles recounts the affair in his 1998 book, The Baltimore Case,[23][24] while Yale University mathematician Serge Lang strongly criticized Baltimore's behavior.[25] Baltimore has also written his own analysis.[26]
On 13 May 1997, Baltimore was appointed president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).[27] He began serving in the office 15 October 1997 and was inaugurated 9 March 1998.[28]
During Baltimore's tenure at Caltech, United States President Bill Clinton awarded Baltimore the National Medal of Science in 1999 for his numerous contributions to the scientific world. In 2004, Rockefeller University gave Baltimore its highest honor, Doctor of Science (honoris causa).[29]
In October 2005, Baltimore resigned the office of the president,[30] saying, "This is not a decision that I have made easily, but I am convinced that the interests of the Institute will be best served by a presidential transition at this particular time in its history..."[31] Former Georgia Tech Provost Jean-Lou Chameau succeeded Baltimore as president of Caltech.[32] Baltimore remains the Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech and is an active member of the Institute's community.
Soon after Baltimore's resignation, and at his request, Caltech began investigating the work Luk van Parijs had conducted while a postdoc in Baltimore's laboratory.[33] Van Parijs first came under suspicion at MIT, for work done after he had left Baltimore's lab. After van Parijs had been fired by MIT, his doctoral supervisor also noted problems with work van Parijs did at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, before leaving Harvard to go to Baltimore's lab.[34] Concluding in March 2007, the Caltech investigation found van Parijs alone committed research misconduct and that four papers co-authored by Baltimore, van Parijs, and others required correction.[35]
Baltimore was married in 1968 to Dr. Alice S. Huang. They have one daughter.
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   | ruling on Thereza Imanishi-Kari case - 1996.06.21 DAB1582 Thereza Imanishi-Kari, Ph.D. |
| | Baltimore bio at Caltech - Biology Division - David Baltimore |
| | Baltimore Laboratory at Caltech - The Baltimore Laboratory | Home Page |
| | Caltech President site - Dr. Jean-Lou Chameau, President |
| | No Nobel Prize for Whining - No Nobel Prize for Whining - The New York Times |
| | Gateway Engineering Education Coalition - ::Gateway Engineering Education Coalition |
| | "They Began Here" - They Began Here -- Newsday.com |
| | page - Issues in S and T, Summer 2003, Baltimore's Travels |
| | Bad data fail to halt patents - Bad data fail to halt patents. [Nature. 2006] - PubMed Result |
| | The Wnt receptor Ryk is required for Wnt5a-mediated axon guidance on the contralateral side of the corpus callosum - The Wnt receptor Ryk is required for Wnt5a-mediate...[J Neurosci. 2006] - PubMed Result |
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