IN MEMORIAM

Gene Norman Levine
Professor of Sociology, Emeritus

UC Los Angeles
1930 – 2004

Gene Levine, professor emeritus of sociology, died in Santa Monica in the summer of 2004 at the age of 74.  Professor Levine joined the UCLA Department of Sociology in 1965, retiring thirty five years later in 1990.

Receiving his doctorate at Columbia University in 1959, under the guidance of Robert Merton, he subsequently did postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago Law School.  His first academic appointment was at Columbia’s Bureau of Applied Social Research where he worked closely with Herbert Hyman.  He considered Seymour Lipset, Reinhard Bendix, Renee Fox, Patricia Kendall, and Paul Lazarsfeld, in addition to Merton, as important influences on his work.

Focusing upon questions of political sociology, Professor Levine was particularly interested in studies of ethnicity.  His published work included Workers Vote [1963]; Inducing Social Change in Developing Communities [with H. Hyman and C. Wright, 1967], Japanese American Community [1981], American Public Opinion and the Fallout-Shelter Issue [with J. Modell, in press at the time of his death].

Retiring to Albuquerque, New Mexico, Levine continued his rich intellectual life.  Having undertaken training in psychoanalysis after receiving his doctorate, he affiliated himself with the New Mexico Psycho-Analytic Society.  He also became an adjunct professor at the

University of New Mexico.

 

Joyce Appleby