In Celebration of the Life and Legacy of David Baltimore 

On December 10, 2025, the MIT community celebrated David Baltimore's lasting impact on science and the countless people whose lives and careers he inspired.

Remarks were offered by:

• Matthew Vander Heiden (Director, MIT Koch Institute)
• Sally Kornbluth (President, MIT)
• Phillip Sharp (Institute Professor, MIT)
• Gerald Fink (Member Emeritus, Whitehead Institute)
• Harold Varmus (Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College)
• David Page (Member, Whitehead Institute)
• Eric S. Lander (Founding Director, Core Institute Member, Broad Institute)
• Irving Weissman  (Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor of Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research, Professor of Pathology, and Developmental Biology, Stanford University)
• TK Baltimore
• Ruth Lehman (President and Director, Whitehead Institute)

The memorial was co-hosted by the Broad Institute, MIT's Koch Institute, the Ragon Institute, the MIT Department of Biology, and the Whitehead Institute.

About David Baltimore

Research pioneer, advocate and leader David Baltimore, PhD is the 2025 recipient of the Hockfield Prize. President Emeritus and Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, Baltimore began his research career in the 1960s focusing on virology and immunology including transcriptional and post-transcriptional control of the inflammatory process, particularly genes controlled by NF-κB, and normal and pathological functions of microRNAs and their roles in controlling immune cells. 

A founding faculty member of the MIT Center for Cancer Research, Baltimore received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his paradigm-shifting discovery of reverse transcriptase, showing that genetic information can move bidirectionally between DNA and RNA. Reverse transcriptase is now used widely in science and biomedical applications. He then founded the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, serving as inaugural director from 1982-1990, before becoming president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1997-2006.

From notable beginnings as a co-organizer of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA in 1975, Baltimore has long been an influential and effective advocate for science, impacting national policy debates on topics such as recombinant DNA research—which plays a crucial role in cancer research—the AIDS epidemic, and most recently, genome editing. He has also served on a number of national advisory committees and headed professional organizations and initiatives, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Baltimore passed away in September 2025 at age 87.