Born in South Africa on 2 February 1908, the eldest child of Benjamin Levitt a landowner and Jenny Goodman his wife, he was educated at the University of Cape Town, where he took first-class honours in anatomy in 1929 and in physiology in 1930. He was an assistant lecturer in the University for a short time, and then came to the Middlesex Hospital medical school, served as demonstrator of anatomy, and took the Conjoint qualification in 1934 and the Irish Fellowship in 1937. He was house surgeon at Bedford County Hospital and Gloucester Royal Infirmary, and surgical assistant at the Paddington Hospital. During the war of 1939-45 he served in the RAMC as a surgical specialist. After the war he took the Edinburgh Fellowship in 1946, and the English Fellowship in 1948, thus becoming one of the very few holders of all three surgical Fellowships. He worked as an assistant in the thyroid clinic at New End Hospital, Hampstead under Sir Geoffrey Keynes and J E Piercy, but held no official appointment. In spite of his wide knowledge and experience he was not a practical surgeon and devoted more time and energy to coaching, lecturing, and writing. No pains were too much for him in these activities and no detail escaped him in preparing the material for a lecture or grooming a candidate for the Fellowship examination. He was for many years lecturer in surgery under the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine at New End Hospital, and was a most successful coach, who won the regard and gratitude of his numerous pupils, many of them from overseas. He was appointed a Hunterian Professor in 1952, and followed up his excellent lecture with a large book on *The Thyroid* (1954) which was well received though somewhat controversial. Like all his theoretical work it was thorough and clear. He visited America in 1955 to lecture under the auspices of the Kellogg Foundation and the International College of Surgeons. On his return to England he received a research appointment at the Royal Marsden Hospital, and began to write a comprehensive treatise on cancer and the thyroid. Toby Levitt suffered a coronary thrombosis in 1952, and this recurred in 1955. He was thereafter a very sick man, and died in the Charing Cross Hospital on 22 February 1958 aged 49. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Bushey, Watford. He had practised at 10 Harley Street; he was unmarried. Levitt was a constant reader in the College Library in the twelve years between the end of the war and his final illness. Publications: Evolution of the toxic thyroid gland, a study based on 2114 thyroidectomies. *Lancet* 1951, 2, 957. Status of lymphadenoid goitre, Hashimoto's disease and Reidel's disease (Hunterian lecture, RCS.) *Ann Roy Coll Surg Engl* 1952, 10, 369. *The Thyroid, a physiological, pathological, clinical, and surgical study*. Edinburgh, Livingstone 1954. 606 pages.