He has played a central role in the application of the principles of quantum mechanics to the description of physical change in a reaction from a microscopic point of view, introducing many new concepts and terms which have become standard to this area.
Recognizing the insufficiency of the microscopic approach to fully comprehend the dynamics of complex systems, Levine formulated a novel theoretical method for analyzing the molecular reactions, based on ideas borrowed from thermodynamics and information theory. His ‘surprisal analysis’ (brought forth in 1972 in collaboration with Richard Bernstein and Avinoam Ben-Shaul) became a major analytical tool in the study of reaction dynamics, and spread into diverse branches of science such as chemistry, physics and engineering. Extending and implementing ‘surprisal analysis’ in biology and most recently in the field of personalized medicine lies at the basis of MEDPNC. For information on MEDPNC please refer to the Portfolio section on the GHP website.
Prof. Levine is a recipient of numerous prizes, including the Israel prize in Exact Scienses, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry and the EMET Prize in Exact Sciences. He is a member of Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Max Planck Society, Academia Europaea, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, American Philosophical Society, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
