Dr. Robert Levy; Linked Cholesterol With Heart Disease

Dr. Robert Levy, 63, a former director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Levy was particularly known for his research that helped link cholesterol levels with heart disease. Born in New York’s Bronx, and educated at Cornell University and the Yale School of Medicine, he joined the national heart group, a part of the National Institutes of Health, in 1963. He was one of the researchers who separated cholesterol into high-density, or “good,” and low-density, or “bad,” lipoproteins. As institute director from 1975 to 1981, Levy supervised a five-year heart disease study involving 10,000 people. The study concluded that people could reduce their risk of stroke, heart attack and death from heart disease through proper care, including taking a drug to lower levels of “bad” cholesterol. In 1981, Levy was named vice president and dean of the Tufts University School of Medicine and later became vice president for health sciences and professor of medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was president of the Sandoz Research Institute from 1988 to 1992 and president of the Wyeth-Ayerst research arm of American Home Products Corp. from 1992 to 1998; later he was the corporation’s senior vice president for science and technology. On Saturday in New York of pancreatic cancer.