NAME DROPPING: Can UCI’s Beckman Laser Institute...

NAME DROPPING: Can UCI’s Beckman Laser Institute wield some clout or what? It passed around a belated birthday card for its patron, Arnold O. Beckman, and among those signing were senator-turned-governor Pete Wilson, Nobel laureate David Baltimore, banker David Rockefeller and all five living U.S. presidents. (Margaret Thatcher, too distant to sign, sent a personal letter instead.) . . . It took six months to marshal the signatures, and the card turned out so well the institute’s keeping it. Beckman will receive lithograph No. 1 of 300 at a reception tonight.