Baltimore's tenure analyzed

Times science writer Robert Lee Hotz reports on the website that David Baltimore's decision to step down as Caltech president "concludes a central chapter in one of the most remarkable comeback stories in the annals of American science."

He was tapped to take over the university in 1997 after years in exile from public life for his role in an acrimonious national controversy about research fraud that cost him the presidency of Rockefeller University in New York.

The decision of a Caltech faculty search committee and the board of trustees to offer Baltimore the presidency was a surprising institutional vote of confidence in a man more than one prominent scientist then considered tainted.

Baltimore said his intention to retire as president of the Pasadena-based university was not prompted by any health problem, budget deficit or management disagreements, but rather a sense that he had accomplished his goals as an administrator. "Caltech is a wonderful place, the best place to do science I have ever seen," Baltimore said. "I will have done what I can do [as president], and it is time for somebody else to be thinking about it. I have a fairly extensive life in science and in business that I will pursue."

Baltimore, easily among the most influential biologists of his generation, shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at age 37 for his work in virology and the discovery of the enzyme reverse transcriptase, used by the AIDS virus, among others, to replicate.

And he's a multi-tasker: while president of Caltech, Baltimore has produced 54 peer-reviewed scientific research papers.