Richard "Dick" Levins (June 1, 1930 – January 19, 2016) was an ex-tropical farmer turned

ecologist Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

, a population geneticist, biomathematician, mathematical ecologist, and

philosopher of science A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

who researched diversity in human populations. Until his death, Levins was a university professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a long-time

political activist A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some ...

. He was best known for his work on

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

and complexity in changing

environments Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...

and on

metapopulation A metapopulation consists of a group of spatially separated populations of the same species which interact at some level. The term metapopulation was coined by Richard Levins in 1969 to describe a model of population dynamics of insect pests in ...

Levins also had written on philosophical issues in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

and modelling. One of his influential articles is "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology". He has influenced a number of contemporary

philosophers A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

of biology. Levins often boasted publicly that he was a 'fourth generation

Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...

' and often had said that the methodology in his ''Evolution in Changing Environments'' was based upon the introduction to

Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

's ''

Grundrisse The ''Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie'' (''Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy'') is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for ...

'', the author's notes (not published until 1939) for ''

Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in materialist phi ...

''. With the evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, Levins had written a number of articles on methodology, philosophy, and social implications of biology. Many of these are collected in '' The Dialectical Biologist''. In 2007, the duo published a second thematic collection of essays titled ''Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health''. Also with Lewontin, Levins had co-authored a number of satirical articles criticizing

sociobiology Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within ...

systems modeling Systems modeling or system modeling is the interdisciplinary study of the use of models to conceptualize and construct systems in business and IT development.ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

, and other topics under the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individu ...

Isadore Nabi. Levins and Lewontin managed to place a ridiculous biography of Nabi and his achievements in ''American Men of Science'', thereby showing how little editorial care and fact-checking work went on in that respected reference work.

Biography

Richard Levins was of Ukrainian Jewish heritage and was born on June 1, 1930, in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. He recorded reminiscences of his politically and scientifically precocious childhood in an article in ''Red Diapers''. He reportedly had read Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters (1926) at age 8 (in 1938) and his first of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

's books at age 12 (in 1942). At the age of 10, Levins had been inspired by the essays of the Marxist biological polymath

J. B. S. Haldane John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biolo ...

, whom Levins considers to be the equal of

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

in scientific importance. Levins studied

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...

and mathematics at

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

. He married Puerto Rican writer Rosario Morales in 1950. Blacklisted on his graduation from Cornell, he and Rosario moved to

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

, where they farmed and did rural organizing. They returned to New York in 1956, where he earned his PhD at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

(awarded 1965). Levins taught at the

University of Puerto Rico The University of Puerto Rico ( es, Universidad de Puerto Rico, UPR) is the main public university system in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is a government-owned corporation with 11 campuses and approximately 58,000 students and ...

from 1961 to 1967 and was a prominent member of the Puerto Rican independence movement. He visited

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribb ...

for the first time in 1964, beginning a lifelong scientific and political collaboration with Cuban biologists. His active participation in the

independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the stat ...

and anti-war movements in Puerto Rico led to his being denied tenure at the University of Puerto Rico, and in 1967 he and Rosario and their three children -

Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...

, Ricardo, and Alejandro - moved to Chicago, where he taught at the University of Chicago and constantly interacted with Lewontin. Both Richard and Rosario later moved to

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

with the sponsorship of E. O. Wilson, with whom they had later disputes over

. Levins was elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences but resigned because of the Academy's role in advising the US military during the war. He had been a member of the US and Puerto Rican Communist Parties, the Movimiento Pro Independencia (the

Independence movement in Puerto Rico Throughout the history of Puerto Rico, its inhabitants have initiated several movements to obtain independence for the island, first from the Spanish Empire from 1493 to 1898 and since then from the United States. A spectrum of pro-autonomy, ...

), and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, and he was on an FBI surveillance list. Until his death, Levins was John Rock Professor of Population Sciences and head of the Human Ecology program in th
Department of Global Health and Population
of the

Harvard School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard- MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's firs ...

. In the early 1990s, Levins and others formed the Harvard Working Group on New and Resurgent Diseases. Their work showed that alarming new infections had sprung from changes in the environment, either natural or caused by humans (Wilson et al. 1994). During his final two decades, Levins had concentrated on application of

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

, particularly in the economically less-well-developed nations of this planet. As a member of the OXFAM-America Board of Directors and former chair of their subcommittee on Latin America and the Caribbean, Richard Levins worked from a critique of the industrial-commercial pathway of development and promoted alternative development pathways which focused attention upon (a) economic viability with (b) population equity, (c) ecological and social sustainability, and (d) empowerment of the dispossessed. When his wife Rosario died in 2011, his daughter Aurora moved in with her father in his

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

home. One of Levins's grandchildren is

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origin ...

-based hip hop artist Manny Phesto. Levins died in

, on January 19, 2016. A species of lizard, ''

Sphaerodactylus levinsi ''Sphaerodactylus levinsi'', also known commonly as the Desecheo gecko or the Isla Desecheo least gecko, is a species of lizard in the family Sphaerodactylidae . The species is endemic to Desecheo Island in Puerto Rico. Etymology The specific ...

'', is named in his honor.

Evolution in changing environments

Prior to Levins' work,

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and po ...

had assumed the environment to be constant, while mathematical ecology assumed the genetic makeup of the species involved to be constant. Levins modelled the situation in which evolution is taking place while the environment changes. One of the surprising consequences of his model is that selection need not maximize adaptation, and that species can select themselves to extinction. He encapsulated his major early results in ''Evolution in Changing Environments'', a book based on lectures he delivered in Cuba in the early 1960s. Levins made extensive use of mathematics, some of which he invented himself, although it had been previously developed in other areas of pure mathematics or economics without his awareness of it. For instance, Levins makes extensive use of

convex set In geometry, a subset of a Euclidean space, or more generally an affine space over the reals, is convex if, given any two points in the subset, the subset contains the whole line segment that joins them. Equivalently, a convex set or a convex ...

theory for fitness sets, (resembling the economic formulations of J. R. Hicks) and extends

Sewall Wright Sewall Green Wright FRS(For) Honorary FRSE (December 21, 1889March 3, 1988) was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. He was a founder of population genetics alongsi ...

's path analysis to the analysis of causal feedback loops.

Metapopulation theory

The term

was coined by Levins in 1969 to describe a "population of populations". Populations inhabit a landscape of suitable habitat patches, each capable of hosting a local sub-population. Local populations may become extinct and be subsequently recolonized by immigration from patches; the fate of such a system of local populations (i.e., the metapopulation) depends on the balance between extinctions and colonizations. Levins introduced a model consisting of a single

differential equation In mathematics, a differential equation is an equation that relates one or more unknown functions and their derivatives. In applications, the functions generally represent physical quantities, the derivatives represent their rates of change, ...

, nowadays known as the Levins model, to describe the dynamics of average patch occupancy in such systems. Metapopulation theory has since become an important area of spatial ecology, with applications in conservation biology, population management, and pest control.

Quotations

* "The world is stranger than we can imagine and surprises are inevitable in science. Thus we found, for example, that pesticides increase pests, antibiotics can create pathogens, agricultural development creates hunger, and flood control leads to flooding. But some of these surprises could have been avoided if the problems had been posed big enough to accommodate solutions in the context of the whole." - Dr. Richard Levins

Awards

2015-05-21 Richard Levins at Reception-by window with glare

* Edinburgh Medal in Science and Society *

Lukács Lukács () is a Hungarian surname, derived from the given name Lukács, which is the Hungarian equivalent of Lucas. Alternative spellings and derivative forms in neighboring languages include Lukacs, Lukáč, Lukač, Lukach, Lucaci and Lukači� ...

21st Century Award (for his contributions to mathematical ecology) * Numerous awards in

and

(for contributions to

and

; most recently, the 30th Anniversary Medal of the

Cuban Academy of Sciences The Cuban Academy of Sciences (''Academia de Ciencias de Cuba'') is an official institution of the Cuban state, with headquarters in the National Capitol building in Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city ...

) * Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 'Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research', 1995 * Honorary Doctorate in Environmental Science from the

University of Havana The University of Havana or (UH, ''Universidad de La Habana'') is a university located in the Vedado district of Havana, the capital of the Republic of Cuba. Founded on January 5, 1728, the university is the oldest in Cuba, and one of the firs ...

, 1999 * Honorary Master of Philosophy in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, 2012 * American Public Health Association's 200
Milton Terris Global Health Award
Lecture: "One Foot in, One Foot out" * "The Truth is the Whole: A Symposium in Celebration of the Unity and Dynamic Complexity of Life" was a Festschrift in Honor of Richard Levins for his 85th birthday at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, May 21–23, 2015. "The Truth is the Whole" 85th Birthday Celebration
at

, May 21–23, 2015. Essays, tributes, and reminiscences based on the symposium were published in 2018. Awerbuch, T., M. S. Clark, P. J. Taylor (eds), ''The Truth is the Whole: Essays in Honor of Richard Levins'', The Pumping Station, 2018.

Selected bibliography

*Levins, R. "Genetic Consequences of Natural Selection," in Talbot Waterman and Harold Morowitz, eds., ''Theoretical and Mathematical Biology'', Yale, 1965, pp. 372–387. * *Levins, R. ''Evolution in Changing Environments'', Princeton University Press, 1968. *Levins, R. "Some demographic and genetic consequences of environmental heterogeneity for biological control", ''Bulletin of the Entomological Society of America'', 15:237–240, 1969. *Levins, R. "Extinction", in M. Gerstenhaver, Editor. Some Mathematical Problems in Biology. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, Pages 77–104. In this historic paper, Levins coined the term 'metapopulation' (now widely used). *Levins, R. "Evolution in communities near equilibrium", in M. L. Cody and J.M. Diamond (eds) ''Ecology and Evolution of Communities'', Harvard University Press, 1975. * Nabi, I., (pseud.) "An Evolutionary Interpretation of the English Sonnet: First Annual Piltdown Man Lecture on Man and Society," ''Science and Nature'', no. 3, 1980, 71-73. *Levinsin, R., Haila, Y. Marxilaisena biologinen Yhdysvalloissa. Richard Levinsin haastattelu rjö Haila Tiede & edistys 8(1):29-37 (1983). *Levins, R. and R.C. Lewontin, '' The Dialectical Biologist'', Harvard University Press, 1985. *Puccia, C.J. and Levins, R. ''Qualitative Modeling of Complex Systems: An Introduction to Loop Analysis and Time Averaging'', Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 1986. *Levins, R. and Vandermeer, J. "The agroecosystem embedded in a complex ecological community" in: Carroll R.C., Vandermeer J. and Rosset P., eds., ''Agroecology'', New York: Wiley and Sons, 1990. *Haila, Y., and Levins, R. ''Humanity and Nature'', London: Pluto Press, 1992. * * Awerbuch T.E. Evolution of mathematical models of epidemics. In: Wilson, Levins, and Spielman (eds).Disease in Evolution. New York Academy of Sciences, New York 1994, 225-231.
Wilson, M.
Levins, R., and Spielman, A. (eds)
Disease in Evolution
New York Academy of Sciences, New York 1994 * * * Awerbuch T.E., Brinkman, U., Eckardt, I., Epstein, P., Ford, T., Levins, R., Makhaoul, N., Possas, C.A., Puccia, C., Spielman, A., and Wilson, M., Globalization, development, and the spread of disease. In: Goldsmith and Mander (eds.) The Case Against the Global Economy, Sierra Club Books, 1996, 160–170. *Levins, R. "Touch Red," in Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro, eds., ''Red Diapers: Growing up in the Communist Left'', U. of Illinois, 1998, pp. 257–266. * * * * Awerbuch T., Kiszewski A., and Levins, R., Surprise, Nonlinearity and Complex Behavior. In– Health Impacts of Global Environmental Change: Concepts and Methods; Martens and Mcmichael (eds), 96-102, 2002 * * * Awerbuch, T.E., Gonzalez, C., Hernandez, D., Sibat, R., Tapia, J.L., Levins, R., and Sandberg S., The natural control of the scale insect Lepidosaphes gloverii on Cuban citrus. Inter American Citrus Network newsletter No21/22, July 2004. * *Lewontin, R.C. and Levins, R., "Biology Under The Influence, Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health," New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007. * * Awerbuch T., and Levins, R. Mathematical Models for Health Policy. in Mathematical Models, ds. Jerzy A. Filar, and Jacek B. Krawczyk in Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford, UK

2006 *Predescu, M., Sirbu, R., Levins, R., and Awerbuch T., On the Dynamics of a Deterministic and Stochastic Model for Mosquito Control. ''Applied Mathematics Letters'', 20, 919-925, 2007. * Awerbuch, T.E., Levins, R., The Aging Heart and the Loss of Complexity—a Difference Equation Model. Preliminary report. American Mathematical Society, (1056-39-2059), presented at AMS Convention, San Francisco, California, January 13, 2010 *Levins, R.
Una pierna adentro, una pierna afuera
CopIt ArXives & EditoraC3, Mexico. SC0005ES. , 2015 *Levins, R.
Scientific Method for Today’s Market
''The Mathematical Intelligencer'', 37 (1), 47-47, 2015 (March 1).

References

External links

Personal Website of Prof. Richard Levins, PhD

Harvard webpage

In "Living the 11th Thesis" Richard Levins discusses his own biography

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 'Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research' page on Richard Levins

Finding truth in ‘the whole’, Amy Roeder, October 15, 2015, Featured News Stories, Harvard T.H. Chan website, accessed 10/16/2015
- Includes a good current photo of Dr. Levins
Dialectics of disease: Richard Levins, ''Harvard Public Health Review'', 75th Anniversary Issue, Volume II, 1985-1997, pp. 16-18, accessed 10/16/2015

Google Scholar Citations for Dr. Richard Levins
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levins, Richard 1930 births 2016 deaths American biologists American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent American agronomists Cornell University alumni Columbia University alumni Mathematical ecologists Natural scientists University of Puerto Rico faculty University of Chicago faculty Harvard School of Public Health faculty Harvard University faculty Jewish American scientists American Marxists American Marxist writers Marxist theorists Human ecologists American activists Public health researchers 20th-century naturalists American naturalists American philosophers American expatriates in Cuba