User:Jeibeas/sandbox

EARLY LIFE

Raphael David Levine was born on March 29, 1938 in Alexandria, Egypt to parents Sonia Greenberg and Chaim Levine. Both Sonia and Chaim attended school in Tel Aviv and later studied in London, where Sonia was an undergraduate in journalism and Chaim worked on his Ph.D. in civil engineering. Levine has two younger brothers who are also in academia.

EDUCATION

Primary and Secondary

Levine expressed interest at the age of three in becoming an astronomer. He began school in Haifa in Israel, but he did poorly. It was only towards the end of high school, when Arieh Lavah was his chemistry teacher, when things started to change for him. He swiftly earned a reputation as an outstanding student and graduated highschool with the top prize in Mathematics and Physics. Around this time, Levine also began to smoke a pipe, which he did not quit until 50 years later.

Undergraduate

Being too young for army service, Levine went straight to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a chemistry major, largely due to the influence of Lavah. There were no theoretical chemistry courses offered at the time, so he took classes in Mathematics and Physics instead. Of the few Chemistry courses that he did take, he scraped by in an analytic chemistry lab and failed organic chemistry. It took another educator, Gabriel Stein, to lift Levine out of what was quickly becoming a repeat of his early school days. As Levine’s mentor, he got him a job as a student technician and did his best to soften the blow of Levine’s less-than-satisfactory grades. When it came time to write his thesis for his Masters, Levine chose to work with Stein without hesitation and set out to “determine the quantum yield of photodetachment of the iodide ion in water solution.” Working on his thesis made it clear to Levine that he wanted to continue exploring the theory of chemical reactions. Stein supported Levine further by writing to the Friends of the Hebrew University in England, and they provided Levine with a fellowship of ₤400 a year.

Army Service

Before heading off to England, Levine went back to Israel in 1960 and served two years in the armor corps as a ranger. He went up the ranks quickly, soon achieving the rank of Master Sergeant. He allegedly wrote “his most influential book” during his time in the armor corps, but it remains classified.

Graduate

Whatever knowledge he had about quantum mechanics was replaced with the mechanics of track vehicles. To refresh his memory, George Hall suggested that Levine attend the Summer Schools of Quantum Chemistry created by Per-Olov Löwdin at Uppsala University. There, Levine met many other aspiring theorists who became his close friends.

In 1964, Levine submitted his doctoral thesis, “Theories of Chemical Reactions.”  He did his postdoc with Charles Coulson at the Mathematical Institute in Oxford from 1964-1966.

Sources

Israel Journal of Chemistry

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijch.5680470101/full

Molecular Physics Journal

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00268970701794332?needAccess=true

Apologies for the late peer review.

I'm guessing your segment of the biography stopped here and someone else mentions Levine's current work and employment. What you have is very good, I made a few notes, and I'd suggest making your citations in the body itself to keep track for yourself for later. I would also suggest expanding his Ph.D section some if you are able to elaborate on what he actually studied.

Very well done.

-Austin Rist