Michael Levitt — chem (nobel) with roots in the Russian Empire
Michael Levitt (born 9 May 1947, Pretoria) is a biophysicist with American, British, Israeli and South African citizenship. He shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems. He worked at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and the Weizmann Institute before becoming professor of structural biology at Stanford in 1987.
"His father left Plungė for South Africa aged 10. Levitt was born in Pretoria in 1947, moved to England at 15, became an Israeli citizen in 1980 and has been a professor at Stanford since 1987."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Plungė (Kovno Governorate)
Levitt's father was born in Plungė, a town in the Telshi uyezd of the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire until the First World War and in independent Lithuania from 1918, and moved to South Africa aged 10. His mother was born in Johannesburg to parents from Czechoslovakia.
Father born in Plungė, Lithuania, and moved to South Africa aged 10; mother born in Johannesburg to emigrants from Czechoslovakia.
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Plungė (Kovno Governorate). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.