Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

Baltimore-53
LIPPINCOTT: It must have been hard to talk in front of them, because of your emotions, I
suppose.
BALTIMORE: It was hard. It was just remarkable.
LIPPINCOTT: But you managed to open your mouth and make a sound after a while.
BALTIMORE: Well, luckily, I’d written it out, so at least my opening paragraph— The opening
paragraph of that talk, if you’ve never read it, has been quoted widely over the years.
LIPPINCOTT: I think I looked at it on the Nobel website. That’s a terrific website. They have
some film clips of people from the thirties—like P. A. M. Dirac.
BALTIMORE: Well, Dirac was there. I remember meeting Dirac; he lived a very long time. He
only died ten or fifteen years ago. There’s just a new biography of Dirac out—supposed to be
very good.
LIPPINCOTT: Yes, The Strangest Man.
BALTIMORE: He was a strange man. [Laughter]
LIPPINCOTT: You know what’s funny about that This is totally incidental, but I also
interviewed Val Telegdi, a year or so ago, and brought up Dirac. And Telegdi looked at me and
said, “He was the strangest man I ever met.” Well, that’s what almost everybody says about
him. [Laughter] That’s why they called his biography that. There’s a film clip of him—I think
it was in ’33 that he won, with Heisenberg—a short clip of him signing in, and he just looks at
the camera like this, and he goes [makes rueful moue]. [Laughter] It’s beautiful! Because he
never would say much.
BALTIMORE: Right.