David Baltimore on Viruses, Viruses, Viruses

PASADENA, Calif. — It's hard to open a newspaper or hear a news broadcast today without there being a story about a virus. It used to be only HIV, but now it is SARS, monkeypox, Ebola, Newcastle disease, flu, or something brand new. Why are we seemingly plagued by viruses we never heard much about before? Is it modern travel, better methods of diagnosis, or what? And, can we counter these new and awful critters? What are viruses anyway, and where do they come from?

Big questions for one evening's discussion of the most basic, unadorned form of life we know, what Caltech president David Baltimore calls "the lowly but beautiful virus." On Wednesday, October 15, Baltimore will tackle these questions in his talk, "Viruses, Viruses, Viruses," the first of the 2003-2004 Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series at Caltech. The lecture will take place at 8 p.m. in Beckman Auditorium, near Michigan Avenue south of Del Mar Boulevard, on Caltech's campus in Pasadena. Seating is available on a free, no-ticket-required, first-come, first-served basis.

Baltimore, Caltech's seventh president, is one of the most influential biologists of his generation. For his identification of the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which greatly expanded scientists' understanding of retroviruses like HIV, Baltimore shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Caltech has offered the Watson Lecture Series since 1922, when it was conceived by the late Caltech physicist Earnest Watson as a way to explain science to the local community.

For more information, call 1(888) 2CALTECH (1-888-222-5832) or (626) 395-4652.

Media Contact: Mark Wheeler (626) 395-8733 wheel@caltech.edu

Visit the Caltech Media Relations website at http://pr.caltech.edu/media