Chicago Medical School (CMS) Distinguished Alumnus Arthur S. Levine, MD ’64, was considered a “high-risk” candidate when he applied to medical school. A graduate of Columbia University, where he majored in Russian literature and edited the Columbia Review, he had worked in Off-Broadway theater. He was a published author. He was married and had a child.
There was another factor: Quotas to limit the number of Jewish students were still in force at some U.S. medical schools through the 1960s.
“I think CMS under then–President and Dean John Sheinin had its own kind of creativity and that they were more of a risk-taker than other schools might have been,” Dr. Levine said. “The common ground I’ve seen among some of my classmates whose careers unfolded in unpredictable ways was interest in the humanities — in the art and science of medicine.”
Dr. Levine enrolled in medical school to make a living as a psychoanalyst, which “seemed vaguely literary and even romantic,” he wrote in the 2024 CMS Reunion Memories. He recalled falling in love with molecular biology during his second year at CMS after seeing photos made by Dr. Rosalind Franklin of the crystal structure of DNA.
Vice president and valedictorian of his CMS class, Dr. Levine and his creative passion proved well worth the risk. The physician-scientist, pediatric oncologist and distinguished university professor helped lead and shape the National Institutes of Health for 31 years. In 1998, he took on a dual commitment to the University of Pittsburgh: dean of the School of Medicine and senior vice chancellor of health sciences. In the latter role, he was responsible for the School of Medicine, in addition to the schools of pharmacy, nursing, public health, dental medicine, and health and rehabilitation sciences. As dean, he added 10 academic departments and established 10 centers and institutes.
Dr. Levine is the son of Russian immigrants, descended from a long line of rabbis. His older first cousin, Donald Glaser, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 34. His mother, Ethel Rubenstein, was a schoolteacher, an activist and a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
“I seek people who have demonstrated creativity. … Creativity is generalizable. It translates to both medicine and science.”
“From a very early age, perhaps from infancy, I was exposed to the power of the word,” Dr. Levine said. “It’s natural that I should want to explain in everyday language the fundamental aspects of science.”
Currently a professor of medicine, molecular genetics and neurobiology at Pitt, Dr. Levine also serves as executive director of the university’s Brain Institute, a challenge he accepted in 2020 as part of a new Assault on Alzheimer’s initiative. It’s in that capacity that he visited RFU on Sept. 19, 2024, to deliver a Grand Rounds presentation on the latest findings in Alzheimer’s research and the need for relevant animal models to test potential therapeutic interventions.
In Alzheimer’s disease, trigger proteins amyloid-beta and tau begin to accumulate almost two decades before people become symptomatic. Dr. Levine cited a breakthrough in AD diagnosis with the invention and development of the amyloid plaque imaging Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) by Pitt researchers William Clunk and Chet Mathis.
“They demonstrated for the first time that one could, in fact, visualize the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease without biopsying the brain,” Dr. Levine said. “This is a disease that starts many years earlier than symptoms — something we’ve discovered about Parkinson’s disease, as well.”
Of all his many achievements in medicine, science and leadership, Dr. Levine told an NIH biographer his most important contribution was “the people I recruited” — people including prospective medical students who don’t quite fit the mold.
“I seek people who have demonstrated creativity,” he said. “That doesn’t mean having worked in somebody’s lab for the summer or volunteered in a hospital clinic. It means somebody who has written poetry, or designed a dance, or somebody who, while working as a roofing assistant over the summer, figured out a way to put shingles together that nobody had ever thought of before. Creativity is generalizable. It translates to both medicine and science.”
Judy Masterson is a staff writer with RFU’s Division of Marketing and Brand Management.