David Baltimore
California Institute of Technology
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Primary Section: 44, Microbial Biology Secondary Section: 43, Immunology and Inflammation Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1974)
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Biosketch
David Baltimore is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at Caltech. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1975 for research in virology, Baltimore has profoundly influenced national science policy on such issues as recombinant DNA research and the AIDS epidemic. Dr. Baltimore graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in chemistry. He took graduate courses at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his PhD from Rockefeller University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He was a Research Associate at The Salk Institute in 1965 and joined the faculty at MIT in 1968. He has served as Director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, President of Rockefeller University, and President of Caltech. He was awarded the 1999 National Medal of Science and 2000 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and the French Academy of Sciences. He has been President and Chair of the American Association of the Advancement of Science.
Research Interests
David Baltimore has made key contributions to immunology, virology, cancer research, biotechnology and recombinant DNA research. From the beginning, Baltimore was interested in fundamental research approaches, often looking for biochemical aspects of infectious and responding processes. Baltimore has played an important role in the development of American biotechnology including the founding of Calimmune and Immune Design. Before closing in 2019, Dr. Baltimore's lab at Caltech focused on the physiological and pathological functions of microRNAs and control of inflammatory and immune responses, specifically splicing control of gene expression after inflammatory stimuli. Baltimore continues to serve on the Board of Directors and Science Advisory Boards on several companies and non-profit institutions and is a public advocate for science and engineering.
