Established at Columbia University in 1977 by a grant from the Samuel and May Rudin Foundation, the Samuel Rudin Distinguished Visiting Professorship program today serves as an important vehicle for the exchange of scientific knowledge among Columbia University, the greater New York City community, and academic institutions from around the world.

Since the inception of the Rudin visiting professorship program, Columbia has welcomed into the Rudin professorship program nearly 50 leading scholars, scientists, researchers, and medical practitioners, representing thirty-plus world-renowned scientific and medical institutions and nine countries worldwide.

2010 - 2011 EVENTS

photo: Bob Paz

David Baltimore, Ph.D.
President Emeritus
Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology
California Institute of Technology

Lecture 1: "NF-kB, MicroRNAs and the Control of Inflammation"
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
4:30 p.m.
Hammer Health Sciences Center,
Room 401
701 West 168th Street, Fourth Floor

Lecture 2: "Engineering the Immune System”
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
4:30 p.m.
Alumni Auditorium
650 West 168th Street, First Floor

After serving as President of the California Institute of Technology for nine years, in 2006 David Baltimore was appointed President Emeritus and the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology. Awarded the Nobel Prize at the age of 37 for research in virology, Baltimore has profoundly influenced national science policy on such issues as recombinant DNA research and the AIDS epidemic.  He is an accomplished researcher, educator, administrator and public advocate for science and engineering and is considered one of the world’s most influential biologists.

Born in New York City, he received his B.A. in Chemistry from Swarthmore College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in 1964 from Rockefeller University, where he returned to serve as President from 1990-91 and faculty member until 1994.

For almost 30 years, Baltimore was a faculty member at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While his early work was on poliovirus, in 1970 he identified the enzyme reverse transcriptase in tumor virus particles, thus providing strong evidence for a process of RNA to DNA conversion, the existence of which had been hypothesized some years earlier.  Baltimore and Howard Temin (with Renato Dulbecco, for related research) shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery, which provided the key to understanding the life-cycle of HIV.  In the following years, he has contributed widely to the understanding of cancer, AIDS and the molecular basis of the immune response. His present research focuses on control of inflammatory and immune responses as well as on the use of gene therapy methods to treat HIV and cancer in a program called “Engineering Immunity”.

Baltimore played an important role in creating a consensus on national science policy regarding recombinant DNA research. He served as founding director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT from 1982 until 1990. He co-chaired the 1986 National Academy of Sciences committee on a National Strategy for AIDS and was appointed in 1996 to head the National Institutes of Health AIDS Vaccine Research Committee.

Baltimore’s numerous honors include the 1999 National Medal of Science. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974 and is a foreign member of both the Royal Society of London and the French Academy of Sciences. For 2007/8, he served as President of the AAAS and was Chairman through February 2009. He has published more than 600 peer-reviewed articles.

2008-09
Eric Olson, Ph.D., UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dalles
View Lecture Video

2007-08
Thomas C. Südhof, M.D., UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

2005-06
Jeffrey I. Gordon, M.D., Washington University School of Medicine

2004-05
Ronald M. Evans, Ph.D., The Salk Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

2003-04
Dr. Michael Karin, University of California, San Diego

2002-03
Dr. Roderick Mackinnon, Rockefeller University

2001-02
Eric S. Lander, Ph.D., Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2000-01
Richard Losick, Ph.D., Harvard University

1999-00
Donald A. Henderson, Johns Hopkins University

1998-99
Robert W. Mahley, University of California at San Francisco
Charles Weissman, University of Surich, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, England

1995-96
Laurie H. Glimcher, Harvard University
Francis S. Collins, National Institutes of Health

1997-98
James E. Rothman, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute

1994-95
Solomon H. Snyder, Johns Hopkins University
Alan Fersht, Cambridge University

1993-94
C. Thomas Caskey, Baylor College of Medicine
Michael E. Phelps, UCLA School of Medicine

1992-93
Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, Federal Republic of Nigeria
Thomas E. Starzl, University of Pittsburgh

1991-92
Jonathan Mann, Harvard Institute of Public Health, International AIDS Center, Boston, MA
Sydney Brenner, Molecular Genetics Unit, Cambridge, England

1990-91
Geoffrey Thorburn, Monash University, Clayton, Australia
Jonathan Beckwith, Harvard University

1989-90
Michael J. Berridge, University of Cambridge
Ira Herskowitz, University of California at San Francisco

1988-89
Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Max Planck Institut, Tubingen, West Germany
Marc W. Kirschner, University of California at Berkeley

1987-88
Sir Roy York Calne, University of Cambridge

1986-87
Alexander Borbély, University of Zurich
Piet Borst, The Netherlands Cancer Institute

1985-86
Tom Maniatis, Harvard University
Alexander Rich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1984-85
Kurt Wüthrich, Eidgenossische Technische, Hoschule, Zurich
Daniel E. Koshland, Jr., University of California at Berkeley

1983-84
Philippe Coumel, Hôpital Lariboisière, Paris
Joseph Martin, Harvard University

1982-83
Peter J. Morris, Oxford University
Keith R. Yamamoto, University of California at San Francisco

1977-78
Bruce N. Ames, University of California at Berkeley
Francis D. Moore, Harvard University
Baruj Benacerraf, Harvard University
David Mechanic, University of Wisconsin

1980-81
Harold M. Weintraub, University of Washington

1979-80
Charles Scriver, McGill University
Sir Richard Doll, Oxford University
Norman Geschwind, Harvard University

1978-79
Efraim Racker, Cornell University
Leo Sachs, Weizmann Institute
Rozella M. Schlotfeldt, Case Western Reserve University
Paul Lacy, Washington University, St. Louis