What colleagues are saying about Michael Levitt

Below is a collection of comments from Michael Levitt's colleagues:

"I regard Michael as the founder of computation biology, the leading figure in the field. He is also one of my closest friends in the world. He is a gem of a person. You will never find a more generous or modest individual."
— Roger Kornberg, , PhD, Stanford professor of structural biology and the Mrs. George A. Winzer Professor in Medicine, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006 and who has known Levitt since the two were studied together at Cambridge in the early 1970s.

"Michael's work really is the groundbreaking work that started decades ago and laid the foundation for the field right now, which is really key to essentially all areas of molecular science. …  The work that he sort of founded with Karplus and Warshel is now playing such a critical role, and it would not have been possible without his contributions then. It's an exciting thing, especially because this field is becoming so important; this award really recognizes them, but also recognizes the field as well. Michael has always been just trying to do very exciting science, for the love of science, and so it's also personally very exciting to see someone like that win the prize."
— Vijay Pande, PhD, Stanford professor of chemistry

"Michael is a real pioneer in science. He was one of the first people to apply computers to biology, which is a huge field right now. This is such a deserved Nobel Prize. He's also a very dear friend of mine and a wonderful, nice man. It's all that is great about science. I've been waiting for this day for a long time."
— Joseph Puglisi, PhD, professor and chair of structural biology at Stanford

"The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is perfectly fitting for Mike's contributions to chemistry and medicine and a clear example of the value of basic theoretical research to practical medicine. Today we take computer modeling in biology for granted, but Dr. Levitt was one of its pioneers, using it to predict the shapes of important biological molecules. Thanks to his agile mind, not to mention his boundless energy, curiosity and collegiality, he effortlessly crosses the disciplines of computer science, physics and biology to carry out this foundational work in computational biology."
— Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine

"The Nobel Prize is not only fitting recognition of the significance of Mike's work to medicine, and another extraordinary honor for Stanford, it is further proof of the success and impact of interdisciplinary collaboration."
— John Hennessy, PhD, president of Stanford University