American microbiologist

At the age of 37, David Baltimore was awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his groundbreaking work on retrovirus replication. Baltimore pioneered work on the molecular biology of animal viruses, especially poliovirus, and his investigations of how viruses interact with cells led, in 1970, to the discovery of a novel enzyme, reverse transcriptase. This enzyme transcribes RNA to DNA and permits a unique family of viruses, the retroviruses, to code for viral proteins. Baltimore shared the Nobel Prize with virologist Renato Dulbecco and oncologist Howard Temin, who independently discovered the same enzyme. Baltimore's achievement had profound implications for...