Cyrus Levinthal, 68, a Columbia University biologist who made fundamental contributions to molecular biology and molecular modeling, died of lung cancer on November 4 at his home in New York City. Levinthal earned his Ph.D. in physics in 1951 at the University of California, Berkeley, but later in the decade turned his attention to the rapidly emerging field of molecular biology. After teaching physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for seven years, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in 1957 to help build a biology department based on using the tools of physics to solve biological problems. In 1968 he joined Columbia University in New York as the chairman of the newly established department of biological sciences, and a year later was named the university's first William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Biophysics, a chair he held until the time of his death.
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