Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

Baltimore-60
contemporary. So that’s what I presented to him. He said I was the only one who ever came in
with an idea that wasn’t about their own research and he liked that. I guess I was moderately
persuasive, so a couple of days later he called me up and said, “Would you consider directing
such an institute” And I then—
LIPPINCOTT: With the idea that it would be at MIT
BALTIMORE: No, the site of it was entirely open at that moment, and he had had some
discussions with other institutions: Stanford, Rockefeller, Harvard—certainly not MIT. He
hardly knew MIT did biology.
So I, after thinking about it for a while, said to him that, no, I would not agree to be
director. What I would agree to was to be his consultant in the formation of the institute, and if I
could build a structure that was attractive to me, then I would be director. And he agreed to that.
So then I started the process of visiting these other institutions, talking to people at MIT—Jack
loved to kid me later, saying the institute could have been anywhere, as long as it was MIT.
LIPPINCOTT: Whom did you talk to at MIT about this—the head of the Biology Department
BALTIMORE: I talked to the head of biology, Maury Fox. I talked to the president, Paul Gray. I
talked to the board chairman, who was Howard Johnson, who had been president. And I talked
to Josh at Rockefeller. And I talked with the dean at Harvard Medical School, who said “Look,
no problem with this; we can make it work.” This is now a very long discussion. Jack had very
particular requirements, and the basic form of these requirements was that the institute be
independent, have its own board, and be able to—as Jack liked to say—make its own mistakes.
LIPPINCOTT: And hire its own faculty
BALTIMORE: Hire its own faculty.
LIPPINCOTT: Without interference from the parent