Harvard Medical School professor Norman L. Letvin 71, who was renowned as one of the scientific communitys leaders in the quest to develop an AIDS vaccine, was remembered after his death last month for not only his groundbreaking research but also his welcoming demeanor, musical gifts, and devotion to family.

Letvin, a pioneer in the use of non-human primates in AIDS vaccine research, died of pancreatic cancer on May 28 at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He was 62.

After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, Letvin earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1975. Whilecompleting post-graduate training at the University of Pennsylvania, Letvin married Marion Stein 71, a fellow doctor. The two returned to Boston, where Letvin completed his senior residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In the early 1980s, Letvin discovered simian immunodeficiency virus, a virus similar to HIV that causes an AIDS-like illness in monkeys. That momentous finding led to a workable way for scientists to test HIV vaccines.

From 1994 until his death, he served as chief of the Division of Viral Pathogenesis at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He also edited the AIDS section of Science for 13 years.

Those who knew Letvin remembered his stunning intuition as a scientist.

I think he just had a natural talent for asking the right questions in science, his wife Marion said. He knew how to set up experiments in a way that whatever the results were, the data would be useful.

Though his laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess was at the forefront of vital AIDS research, Letvin did not foster a tense working environment, colleagues recalled.

His door was always open. He made everyone feel that he was extremely approachable, said Wendy W. Yeh, a Medical School professor who worked in Letvins lab.

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Groundbreaking AIDS Researcher Dies at 62