When William Brody decided to step down as president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, earlier this year, the 64-year-old was looking forward to some downtime. But just as he was about to publicly announce his retirement, the Salk Institute came calling. "I asked if they were tapping my phone," says Brody, who will start as Salk's president next March. Brody had assumed Salk was looking for an active molecular biologist. But Salk didn't want someone brought from the bench to manage fellow scientists. The small institute, often described as talent-rich but resource-poor, wanted a big name that could bolster its small endowment. Salk also wanted some stability; in the past two decades most of its presidents have stayed for only a year or two.
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