Ahead of the Curve

Nobel Prize winner Baltimore has had a remarkable influence on 20th-century biology. As one colleague has stated, ""It is not an exaggeration to say that one could write a pretty decent history of the last 25 years in biology by reviewing Dr. Baltimore's contributions."" Indeed, Baltimore has made significant discoveries in molecular biology, been actively involved in cancer and AIDS research, was the founding director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, was president of Rockefeller University, is currently president of the California Institute of Technology and was at the center of the nation's most protracted and public examination of scientific fraud. Crotty, a doctoral fellow at UC-San Francisco, does an impressive job of outlining Baltimore's scientific role in many of his major discoveries and makes many of the basics of modern molecular biology accessible to the general public. What is missing, however, is any deep sense of Baltimore. We see many of his actions and his experiments but we never fully come to know the individual. His personal life is almost entirely undisclosed, as are the reasons why a significant portion of the scientific establishment turned on him amid the accusations of fraud, of which he was ultimately cleared. Nonetheless, readers wanting to gain insight into the politics of contemporary science and those with a particular interest in microbiology, cancer and AIDS research will not be disappointed. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)