David Baltimore
The information listed below is current as of the date the transcript was finalized.
Interview Details
Interview Sessions
Abstract of Interview
David Baltimore begins the series of interviews describing his interest in biology as a high-school student and throughout his college years at Swarthmore. During college, he spent a summer at Cold Spring Harbor where he met Cy Levinthal and Salva Luria, both of whom encouraged him to go to graduate school at MIT. As an undergraduate, Baltimore held an interest in viruses. Knowledge and study of animal virology were still very limited, and when he decided to devote his PhD thesis to this topic, he moved to Rockefeller University to join Richard M. Franklin who was working with mengovirus. In his graduate work, he discovered that cultured animal cells infected with mengovirus synthesized an enzyme that catalyzed the synthesis of viral RNA. This was the first example of a virus coding for an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. He then began working with poliovirus, work that continued for many years. In 1965, Renato Dulbecco asked Baltimore to join him at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. There he initially focused on the replication of poliovirus RNA. With Mike Jacobson, a graduate student, he also began studying viral protein synthesis. Their work contributed to the recognition of the importance of proteolytic processing in the synthesis of eukaryotic proteins. Baltimore left the Salk Institute after two and a half years and returned to MIT in 1968 as an Associate Professor of Microbiology. He continued to focus his research on poliovirus, but also began work on vesicular stomatitis virus [VSV]. He and his wife, Alice Huang, who at the time was a research associate in his lab, discovered that VSV carried an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase within the virus particle. This work provided the insight that led to his discovery of reverse transcriptase—the enzyme in retroviruses that transcribes DNA from RNA—and won Baltimore the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1975 along with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco. Baltimore's work with retroviruses was the beginning of his interest in and work on cancer and tumor biology. In the mid-1970s, Baltimore expanded his research interests into the field of immunology, specifically into the areas of B cell development and antibody diversity. Baltimore concludes the interviews with a discussion of the discovery of reverse transcriptase, and thoughts on his research on poliovirus, retroviruses and immunology at MIT in the 1980s.
Education
Year | Institution | Degree | Discipline |
---|---|---|---|
1960 | Swarthmore College | BA | Chemistry |
1964 | The Rockefeller University | PhD |
Professional Experience
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
American Cancer Society
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
The Rockefeller University
California Institute of Technology
Honors
Year(s) | Award |
---|---|
1970 | First recipient of the Gustave Stern Award in Virology |
1971 | Warren Triennial Prize from the Massachusetts General Hospital |
1971 | Eli Lilly and Co. Award in Microbiology and Immunology |
1974 | United States Steel Award in Molecular Biology, National Academy of Sciences |
1974 | Elected Member of the US National Academy of Sciences |
1974 | Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences |
1974 | Gairdner Foundation Annual Award |
1975 | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine |
1976 | Honorary Doctorate, Swarthmore College |
1978 | Elected Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences |
1980 | Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science |
1985 | Honorary Fellowship, American Medical Writers Association |
1987 | Elected Foreign Member, The Royal Society (England) |
1987 | Honorary Doctorate, Mt. Holyoke College |
1987 | Honorary Membership, Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society |
1988 | Elected Member of the Institute of Medicine |
1990 | Honorary Doctorate, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, New York, NY |
1990 | Honorary Doctorate, Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY |
1990 | Honorary Doctorate, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland |
1991 | Honorary Member, Japanese Biochemical Society |
1992 | Fellow, American Academy of Microbiology |
1997 | Member, American Philosophical Society |
1998 | Fellow, California Council on Science and Technology |
1998 | Honorary Doctorate, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel |
1999 | Fellow, Association for Women in Science |
1999 | Honorary Doctorate, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory |
Table of Contents
Interest in biology. Attending MIT. Cy Levinthal. Thesis in animal virology. Summer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Richard M. Franklin. Rockefeller University. Mengovirus. Igor Tamm. Viral RNA synthesis. Poliovirus.
RNA virus enzyme. Returning to MIT. Polio double-stranded RNA. Postdoc at Einstein. Renato Dulbecco. Becoming a Research Associate at the Salk Institute.
Interest in replicitive intermediates. Protein synthesis. Michael Jacobson, Alice Huang, and Marc Girard. Sabbatical in Paris. Continuing work on polio.
VSV research. Continuing poliovirus research. Messenger RNA. Virus work worldwide. Defective particles. Developing a course in animal virology. Atmosphere of MIT during late 1960s. American Society for Microbiology (ASM). Biological warfare.
Gustave Stern Award. VSV research with Alice Huang. RNA tumor viruses. Howard Temin. Discovery of reverse transcriptase. Leukemia viruses. Salvador Luria. Establishment of the Cancer Center. ASM Eli Lilly Award. Nobel Prize.
Thoughts on winning Nobel Prize. Serving on Advisory Panels. Becoming American Cancer Society Professor. Interest in biological hazards. Recombinant DNA.
Molecular immunology. Antibodies. Decade of work on tumor viruses. Environment of research laboratories. Polio vaccine patent.
About the Interviewer
Sondra Schlesinger is professor of molecular microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine. She received her PhD in biological chemistry from the University of Michigan and spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Boris Magasanik at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked on enzyme induction and regulation in bacteria. She joined the faculty at Washington University in 1964, where initially she continued her research in the field of microbial genetics and physiology. In the early 1970s, she began her research work on the structure and replication of animal RNA viruses, which continues to this day. Dr. Schlesinger has over one hundred publications spanning these areas of microbiology. She was president of the American Society for Virology in 1992–1993, at which time she began her present interest and work in the history of virology.