Beth Levine ’81

Autophagy, or “self-eating,” is the way cells clean and recycle themselves, keeping us healthy. Biomedical scientist Beth Levine ’81 discovered the mammalian autophagy gene beclin 1, now the most studied of such proteins. She went on to study autophagy’s role in suppressing cancer, viruses, and neurogenerative diseases. “I think what was most critical to my success was my willingness to follow my scientific intuition and curiosity and pursue questions that I thought were important,” she told the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

As part of Levine’s mission to bring together scientists from diverse countries and disciplines to link fundamental biology to human health, she created the Gordon Conference on Autophagy in Stress, Development, and Disease in 2003, which still continues. A colleague remembers her as “an amazing scientist…and a true understated supporter of female scientists.”

After earning a medical degree from Weill Medical College of Cornell University, followed by an internal medicine residency at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, Levine was a postdoctoral fellow in infectious diseases and virology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, rising to director of virology research at Columbia University. She was recruited to University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 2004 and eventually became director of its Center for Autophagy Research and holder of the Charles Cameron Sprague Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science. The university remembers her as “an elegant, driven, and focused researcher who demanded the best from herself and the more than 50 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers she mentored.”

Levine was a founding associate editor of Autophagy and an editorial board member of Cell, which honored her as “an exemplary role model for women in science and medicine, and a caring physician with a lifelong dedication to easing human suffering.” Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013, she won awards and honors including the Phyllis T. Bodel Award from Yale and the Barcroft Medal from Queen’s University in Belfast, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation’s 2014 Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award. 

Levine passed away of cancer in Dallas on June 15. She is survived by her husband Milton Packer, a cardiologist and former professor and chair of the department of clinical sciences at UT Southwestern; a daughter; and a son.