Baldwin also needed a full-production facility that could produce large quantities of weapons, including an order for 1 million bombs filled with anthrax, half for the British and half for the United States. The Chemical Warfare Service acquired a former Army ordnance site in Vigo, Ind., in May 1944 and spent about $10 million over the next 18 months to prepare it for manufacturing biological agents. The Vigo plant could have had a production capacity of 240,000 gallons, but the war ended before safety testing was completed at that facility.

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By then Baldwin was experiencing friction with the Army brass. General Rollo Ditto had complained that work on the Vigo plant was moving too slowly, and he decided to replace Baldwin's engineer with someone who had no biological engineering experience. In response, Baldwin asked to be relieved of technical responsibility for the work. The general backed down somewhat — he sent his personal representative but put him under the direction of Baldwin's engineer.

In a history of anthrax research published in 2001, reporter H.P. Albarelli, Jr., wrote that Baldwin also faced increased pressure from the Army's eagerness to increase anthrax production. Baldwin was less than enthusiastic about anthrax as a weapon, as were many of his handpicked scientists, Albarelli wrote. One of the greatest dangers of using anthrax was the bacteria's longevity — anthrax spores can remain dormant for decades, as the British learned through their experiences on Gruinard Island. Opposing Baldwin was British bacteriologist Lord Trevor Stamp. Former Camp Detrick researchers who knew Stamp said he was often at odds with Baldwin over anthrax research. Stamp generally won out on most clashes, Albarelli wrote, because he had friends in high places. Among them were members of the military who resented Baldwin because of his civilian status. Finally, in the spring of 1945, Baldwin resigned his position to return to Wisconsin and become dean of the university's graduate school.

Baldwin stayed active in the biological weapons program. As chairman of the Committee on Biological Warfare, he continued to be concerned that saboteurs might use biological agents against the United States, perhaps by dispersing organisms in the atmosphere. In October 1948, Baldwin issued a report suggesting that ventilating, water supply and subway systems be tested with innocuous organisms to see how environmental conditions would affect them. One of those experiments took place in September 1950, when Army and Navy personnel on a ship about two miles off the coast near San Francisco Bay sprayed two species of bacteria into the air. They used Bacillus globigii because it formed spores similar to anthrax, and Serratia marcescens because its red pigment made it easy to track. After the experiments became public knowledge in 1977, family members of a 75-year-old man who had died of pneumonia at the time of the tests sued the government, arguing that the bacteria had been responsible for his death, but the courts decided in favor of the government. Nevertheless, several of the organisms used in the tests, including Serratia marcescens, then considered harmless, are now believed to occasionally cause infections, especially in people with compromised immune systems.

Although controversial and potentially dangerous, Baldwin's work with biological weapons neither harmed his academic career nor affected his health. He died peacefully at his Tucson, Ariz., home in 1999 at the age of 103. His death notices gave little attention to his role in the creation of biological weapons. The University of Wisconsin's obituary did not mention that phase of Baldwin's career until the seventh paragraph, and then it was only a brief note: He was also among a national group of scientists that began to explore the frontiers of biological warfare.

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