Harold I. Levine
December 14, 1928 - March 11, 2023
Harold Levine received his PhD in Mathematics at the University of Chicago in 1957, under the direction of S.S. Chern. After postdoctoral positions in Bonn (Germany) and Yale University, he came to Brandeis in 1960 as an Assistant Professor. Harold arrived as part of a talented group of mathematicians who helped bring the Brandeis mathematics department to a high level in a remarkably short period of time. He spent the rest of his career at Brandeis, becoming a full professor in 1968 and Department Chair in 1972. He retired from Brandeis in 1994. Harold was one of eight members of the Mathematics department who were named to the inaugural group of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) in 2012.
Harold's earliest work was in complex analysis, but his interests soon shifted to differential topology, in particular the singularities of differentiable mappings. This subject that would concern him for the rest of his career. His most celebrated work (joint with his Brandeis colleague David Eisenbud) computes the topological degree of a differentiable function in terms of algebraic geometry. His research was applied to general relativity in physics, to studies of gravitational lensing.
In 2016, Harold and his wife Renee funded the Harold I. Levine Fellowship at Brandeis University, which gives financial support to Math PhD student to conduct Mathematical research during summer months.