Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

Baltimore-44
BALTIMORE: The Cookery—that’s all gone. And that great bar—one of the great bars of New
York.....
LIPPINCOTT: The Cedar Tavern
BALTIMORE: The Cedar Tavern closed, and they’re not going to reopen it. So there’s nothing
left of that era, but it’s still a great place to live. I was just there; we came back last night.
LIPPINCOTT: So she’s happy there.
BALTIMORE: She loves it. She doesn’t want to think about ever leaving New York City. She
went to Yale, and then she and her classmates all moved to New York; and many of them are
still there. Some of them have families now, and they’re living in the suburbs, or they’ve moved
away.
LIPPINCOTT: I know. Well, that’s good, because a lot of people grow up without ever living in
New York and wish they had, and their lives are ruined as a consequence. [Laughter] Well, OK.
So you’re back at MIT, and then in 1970 you published your discovery of reverse transcriptase.
BALTIMORE: Yes.
LIPPINCOTT: Along with Howard Temin. He had made the same finding independently, is that
right
BALTIMORE: Right.
LIPPINCOTT: And your papers were published in the same issue of Nature. 6
BALTIMORE: Yes.
6 Baltimore, D., “Viral RNA-dependent DNA Polymerase: RNA-dependent DNA Polymerase in Virions of RNA
Tumour Viruses,” Nature 226: 1209-11 (1970).
Temin, H. M., and S. Mizutani, “ RNA-dependent DNA Polymerase in Virions of Rous Sarcoma Virus,”
Nature 226: 1211-13 (1970).