Background

Levene was born on February 25, 1869, in Sagor, Russia (now Žagarė, Lithuania), the second son and second of eight children of Solom Michael Levene and Etta Brick. His father was a custom shirt-maker who later, in the United States, became a clothing manufacturer.

Education

The Levenes moved to St. Petersburg in 1873 so the children might attend private schools and the classical academy. Upon graduation from the latter in 1886, Phoebus was admitted to the Imperial Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, where chemistry was taught by Borodin and his son-in-law, Alexander Dianin. Because of growing anti-Semitism, the Levene family emigrated to New York in 1891, but Phoebus returned to the medical academy and received his Doctor of Medicine in the fall of that year.

During the course of his medical studies in Russia, he had become keenly interested in chemistry, and in New York, he took courses in this field in the department of physiology of the College of Physicians and Surgeons and at Columbia's School of Mines.

Career

The Levene family moved to the United States in the summer of 1891. He started to practice medicine in New York in 1892. Levene gave up his medical practice in 1896 to become associate in physiological chemistry at the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospitals, located in New York City. His work there was interrupted by an attack of tuberculosis, which caused him to spend nearly two years at Saranac Lake, New York, and Davos, Switzerland, and by the closing of the Institute for reorganization. During the latter interim Levene pursued further chemical studies at Marburg and Munich, served as a chemist at the Saranac Laboratory for the Study of Tuberculosis (1900-1902), and spent a summer of study at the University of Berlin, after which he rejoined the Pathological Institute.

Having already attained recognition for his biochemical research, he was appointed, in January 1905, an assistant on the scientific staff of the newly organized Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, with which institution he was connected for the rest of his life. He continued his research, with the title of member emeritus, after his official retirement in 1939.

His early publications, the first of which appeared in 1894, exhibited a wide range of interest in the chemistry of complex organic substances found in nature. He was especially adept at isolating these materials from mixtures with other tissue constituents, evolving theories with respect to their molecular structures, and providing chemical proofs of the structures he had postulated. His researches were notably fruitful in the fields of complex types of proteins and carbohydrates, and particularly of the intricate acids found in cell nuclei. He brought to bear on the solution of these structural problems not only the usual techniques of the organic chemist but also the newer procedures of the physical chemist.

In his later years, his work was increasingly directed toward the relations between the structure of organic and biochemical compounds and their physical properties. As head of the division of chemistry of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Levene was an inspiring leader for a very numerous group of American and foreign biochemists. Genial and friendly, fired with enthusiasm and untiring energy, he was an able teacher and counselor. He traveled extensively in Europe during the summers, maintained a lively correspondence with friends and scientific acquaintances in many countries, and built up a large private library in several languages, with a noteworthy collection of scientific publications.

He was exceptionally well versed in the historical development of the science of chemistry. His great avocation was the study of art, with a special leaning, after 1913, toward the modern schools. His own appearance, it has been well said of him, "suggested at once the professional man, student, and artist." He died of a heart attack at his home in New York City. Following cremation, a memorial service was held at the Rockefeller Institute.

Achievements

• An American biochemist who carried out extensive research on conjugated proteins, Levene was particularly noted for his pioneering work on nucleoproteins and their component nucleic acides. He studied the structure and function of nucleic acids and characterized the different forms of nucleic acid, DNA from RNA, and found that DNA contained adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine, deoxyribose, and a phosphate group. His scientific contributions reached the astonishing total of over 700 published papers and two books.
  
  He was the recipient of the Willard Gibbs Medal of the Chicago section of the American Chemical Society in 1931 and of the William H. Nichols Medal of its New York section in 1938.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Nucleic Acids: American Chemical Society

    (Volume 56)

  • Three Contributions To the Chemistry of the Unsaturated Phosphatides
  • Hexosamines, their derivatives, and mucins and mucoids

Politics

Levene's political views were liberal; he supported the Kerensky government, but was unsympathetic to the Bolsheviks.

Views

Of particular importance in Levene's career was his pioneering work on the nucleic acids. Although discovered in 1871, little was known about them in 1900 except that they were present in nucleoproteins, and contained phosphoric acid groups associated with nitrogenous and nonnitrogenous material. Levene showed the presence in cells of two principal types. One, obtained readily from yeast, he showed to be composed of four nucleosides in which he identified the hitherto unknown sugar D-ribose. The optical isomer, L-ribose, had recently been synthesized in Europe, and Levene showed his sugar to be identical except for direction of optical rotation. He also synthesized the hypothetical hexose sugars, D-allose and D-altrose, from D-ribose.

Membership

• American Society of Biological Chemists , United States

• National Academy of Sciences , United States

• American Philosophical Society , United States

Personality

Levene was an intense, hard-driving scientist. He liked to work in the laboratory and managed to do so while supervising a staff of postdoctoral students and assistants, many of them from foreign countries. He conferred daily with his associates, keeping in close touch with the progress of their research and making suggestions reflecting his broad familiarity with the literature. An accomplished linguist, he addressed his foreign students in their native tongues. He spoke excellent German and French, but his English always had a heavy Russian accent.

Although a gracious host in a social setting, Levene never permitted social affairs to interfere with his scientific activities.

Physical Characteristics: Levene was thin, of short stature, and had penetrating, dark-brown eyes, close-cropped mustache, and a stern expression.

Interests

• playing the violin

Connections

In 1919 Levene met Anna M. Erickson at Saranac Lake. She was born in Montana but was then a member of the Norwegian Lutheran Colony in Evanston, Illinois. They were married in 1920. There were no children.

Father:

Solom Michael Levene

Mother:

Etta Brick

Spouse:

Anna M. Erickson

colleague:

Walter Abraham Jacobs

He discovered the Gould-Jacobs reaction. Much of his career was spent at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York City.

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 7
  1973
• Great Chemists
  1961