Michael Levitt

Central figure in the field of computational structural biology, whose contributions range from the introduction of now-ubiquitous computational methods and models to the understanding of fundamental biological principles related to the structure and dynamics of proteins and nucleic acids. Work yielded important insights into protein folding units, the packing of alpha helices and beta sheets, the structure of DNA in solution, the flexibility of ribose, and the structure of tRNA (including the Levitt base pair).