Salk Offers Top Job to N.Y. Scientist

James Edwin Darnell, a molecular biologist with a strong administrative background, has been offered the presidency of the Salk Institute, acting President Renalto Dulbecco said Thursday.

“Final negotiations are going on now” between Darnell, a scientist at Rockefeller University in New York City, and officials at the prestigious La Jolla biomedical research center, Dulbecco said. “I hope there would be a decision within a short period of time.”

Darnell, who has been meeting with institute officials and researchers for the past week, was the unanimous choice of the institute’s faculty, Dulbecco said. “He has also met with the search committee and they’ve been very pleased with him,” Dulbecco said. The search committee was created by the institute’s board of directors.

The institute began its search for a new president a year ago, shortly after former President Frederic de Hoffmann resigned after 18 years as president. Hoffmann died in October after contracting AIDS during a blood transfusion. Dulbecco earlier this year agreed to serve as interim president.

The faculty was strongly impressed by Darnell’s research and administrative credentials, according to Dulbecco. Darnell, 59, “was at the top of the list” drafted by the faculty, Dulbecco said.

Darnell once was chairman of Columbia University’s department of biological sciences. In 1974, he joined Rockefeller University, where he conducts research on the molecular structure of cells.