Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

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Baltimore-55 kind of pull out the interesting things. So he starts summarizing, and he goes on and on and on and on. And Alice says she could not figure out why he was going on like that. And he finally said, “Look, I want to make an announcement, but it’s premature. On the other hand, I’ve got nothing more to say, so I’m just going to do it. [Laughter] And at, I guess, eleven-thirty, he announces that the Nobel Prize is going to me and Howard and Renato. LIPPINCOTT: And Alice was there on the dais with him BALTIMORE: Yes. So Alice runs to the nearest phone to call me. Calls me, wakes me up at—it was six-thirty in the morning, I think, in New York—and says, “First of all, nothing’s wrong.” [Laughter] Because in those days you didn’t make international calls lightly; and we never called back and forth unless there was something important, an emergency or whatever. She said, “Nothing’s wrong.” And then she said—you’d have to ask her what she said; I don’t remember at all—but she basically said, “Now, I don’t want this to spoil your life, but this is going to be announced,” and so on, and we talked for a little while. I hung up. It was now five or ten minutes to seven, and the prize was to be announced at seven. The nanny was up with Teak, and I was lying in bed, and it suddenly occurred to me that there was nothing happening. And I wondered, Could it possibly be that that was a dream [Laughter] So I went out and asked Norah, the nanny, whether she had heard the phone ring, and Norah said yes, she had heard the phone ring, so I knew the whole thing was real. And then about two minutes later, all hell broke loose. Reporters started calling. It took a while for the Swedes to find out I was in New York. Everybody has that problem; they’re somewhere else and the Swedes try to find them. The New York Times, having discovered I was in New York, came over to interview me, and the next morning in the New York Times there was the first picture that anybody can ever remember of a baby on the front page of the Times. [Laughter] Because I picked up Teak and I was holding her—although all you can see is the back of her head. That was the photo they used. LIPPINCOTT: Oh, that’s nice—for her, too. BALTIMORE: When she graduated from college, a friend of hers, who had graduated a year earlier and was working at the AP or something in New York, went into the archives and found
Baltimore-56 all the pictures that had never been published which the photographer had taken, and got some of them printed and gave them to Teak as a graduation present. LIPPINCOTT: Great present! OK, so maybe we should move on to talk about the Whitehead Institute, which you founded in 1982. What was the impetus behind that Did that come from higher up at MIT, or was it your idea, or— BALTIMORE: Oh, no, no. In 1980, in August, I got a call from Joshua Lederberg, and Josh said— LIPPINCOTT: Where was he, at the time BALTIMORE: He was at Rockefeller University. And Josh said, “I work with this guy Jack [Edwin C.] Whitehead, and Mr. Whitehead has been trying to develop an institute. He’s got $135 million he’s put aside to do this— LIPPINCOTT: For biomedical research BALTIMORE: Biomedical research. “And there are a couple of people who give him advice, and we think it might be valuable for you to come and talk with him.” So I got on my horse and went down to New York and met with Jack Whitehead and Josh and—I can’t remember who else was in the room. He [Whitehead] asked me a lot of questions like, “What would you do to develop such a thing” LIPPINCOTT: What was his interest He wasn’t a scientist, was he—just a very rich man BALTIMORE: No. He was an interesting man. Jack Whitehead left college in the thirties after six months or something, joined with his father, and formed a company to make scientific instruments, and that company was Technicon. It was Whitehead and Weisskopf—his father was Weisskopf. His mother, who had actually raised him because they were divorced, had taken the name “Whitehead”—anglicized it and made it less obviously Jewish. But they got together and formed this little company. When I was a graduate student, I used Technicon equipment.
Page 1 and 2:
DAVID BALTIMORE (b. 1938) INTERVIEW
Page 3 and 4:
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
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Baltimore-iii 51-55 1975 Nobel Priz
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Baltimore-2 BALTIMORE: The family w
Page 9 and 10: Baltimore-4 LIPPINCOTT: Oh! That wa
Page 11 and 12: Baltimore-6 BALTIMORE: Suburban, si
Page 13 and 14: Baltimore-8 I remember a big thing
Page 15 and 16: Baltimore-10 college at that point;
Page 17 and 18: Baltimore-12 BALTIMORE: Yes. That e
Page 19 and 20: Baltimore-14 BALTIMORE: No, I don
Page 21 and 22: Baltimore-16 BALTIMORE: I did not w
Page 23 and 24: Baltimore-18 BALTIMORE: Yes, that
Page 25 and 26: Baltimore-20 LIPPINCOTT: How big a
Page 27 and 28: Baltimore-22 BALTIMORE: No, this wa
Page 29 and 30: Baltimore-24 BALTIMORE: That’s ri
Page 31 and 32: Baltimore-26 BALTIMORE: I spent all
Page 33 and 34: Baltimore-28 BALTIMORE: No, I think
Page 35 and 36: Baltimore-30 BALTIMORE: Polio and i
Page 37 and 38: Baltimore-32 LIPPINCOTT: So your Ph
Page 39 and 40: Baltimore-34 BALTIMORE: No, I’m n
Page 41 and 42: Baltimore-36 BALTIMORE: Oh, yes, I
Page 43 and 44: Baltimore-38 BALTIMORE: It was year
Page 45 and 46: Baltimore-40 LIPPINCOTT: No, it was
Page 47 and 48: Baltimore-42 DAVID BALTIMORE SESSIO
Page 49 and 50: Baltimore-44 BALTIMORE: The Cookery
Page 51 and 52: Baltimore-46 appears in Howard’s
Page 53 and 54: Baltimore-48 BALTIMORE: Yes, it’s
Page 55 and 56: Baltimore-50 The experiment I descr
Page 57 and 58: Baltimore-52 room and they didn’t
Page 59: Baltimore-54 LIPPINCOTT: OK. Renato
Page 63 and 64: Baltimore-58 and the profits from t
Page 65 and 66: Baltimore-60 contemporary. So that
Page 67 and 68: Baltimore-62 BALTIMORE: And that’
Page 69 and 70: Baltimore-64 BALTIMORE: No, it was
Page 71 and 72: Baltimore-66 understand that. Becau
Page 73 and 74: Baltimore-68 BALTIMORE: I still had
Page 75 and 76: Baltimore-70 LIPPINCOTT: Were they
Page 77 and 78: Baltimore-72 BALTIMORE: This was—
Page 79 and 80: Baltimore-74 LIPPINCOTT: You don’
Page 81 and 82: Baltimore-76 a biology school, in s
Page 83 and 84: Baltimore-78 LIPPINCOTT: OK. So on
Page 85 and 86: Baltimore-80 Judy’s book calls it
Page 87 and 88: Baltimore-82 never came to pass for
Page 89 and 90: Baltimore-84 BALTIMORE: I don’t b
Page 91 and 92: Baltimore-86 BALTIMORE: Well, he wa
Page 93 and 94: Baltimore-88 BALTIMORE: We intervie
Page 95 and 96: Baltimore-90 about this, but when I
Page 97 and 98: Baltimore-92 to announce it.” Gor
Page 99 and 100: Baltimore-94 BALTIMORE: I don’t r
Page 101 and 102: Baltimore-96 BALTIMORE: Yes. LIPPIN
Page 103 and 104: Baltimore-98 LIPPINCOTT: You mean h
Page 105 and 106: Baltimore-100 LIPPINCOTT: OK. In th
Page 107 and 108: Baltimore-102 BALTIMORE: I had no i
Page 109 and 110: Baltimore-104 BALTIMORE: So I was g
Page 111:
Baltimore-106 BALTIMORE: Well, not
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Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

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