David Baltimore, Former Caltech President, Dies at 87

David Baltimore, the Judge Shirley Hufstedler Professor of Biology and President Emeritus of the California Institute of Technology, passed away on September 6 at his home in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He was 87.

Baltimore’s career spanned over six decades, playing a crucial role in developing our current understanding of viral and cell biology. In 1975, at the age of 37 and a mere three years after being awarded tenure at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Baltimore was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco for his work on discovering reverse transcriptase, overturning the then-prevailing view that genetic information flowed only from DNA to RNA. The discovery of reverse transcriptase led to a flurry of scientific activity investigating retroviruses and cancer biology, which paved the way for research on HIV and gene therapy.

In 1982, Baltimore established the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (WIBR) at MIT, where his team—alongside Dr. Ranjan Sen—discovered NF-κB, a critical family of transcription factors that regulates cellular responses to stress stimuli such as cytokines and antigens. Baltimore continued this work at Caltech, where he was appointed its sixth president in 1997, at a time when the Institute was expanding beyond its traditional strengths in physics and engineering. During his tenure, Baltimore expanded the scope of life sciences at Caltech and secured a $100 million gift from Gordon and Betty Moore, the philanthropists and Caltech alumni who co-founded Intel.

Seven years after his initial appointment as president, Baltimore stepped down and was succeeded by Jean-Lou Chameau. He continued serving on the faculty and maintained an active lab presence in the Division of Biology and Bioengineering until 2019, when he closed his lab and retired from academia. Beyond his scientific and administrative achievements, Baltimore is remembered at Caltech as a leader who sought to integrate biology more fully into the Institute’s identity and as a mentor who inspired generations of researchers.

“David maintained that it was necessary to think of biology in the context of the human condition,” writes Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum. “He gave selflessly of his time to nurture individuals and institutions alike.”