William Levison

When William Levison was born in 1909 the Levison Family was already rooted in the northern Rhine area for more than 250 years. The first known ancestor of the male line (Loew) is documented in Siegburg back to the 17th century. William Levison's grandfather Isaac Levison was the first member of the family to become a physician. Isaac graduated in 1857 in Greifswald, and his son and grandson followed in his footsteps. After attending the Schiller-Gymnasium in Cologne until 1927, he studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau, Cologne, and Munich. He passed the state medical examination in Cologne on December 20, 1932 and received his M.D two days later with the dissertation “Komplementbestimmungen bei Herz- und Kreislaufkranken” (Complementary Diagnosis of Patients with Cardiac and Circulatory Conditions), published in Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Experimentelle Medizin (vol. 78. 1931). He completed his internship in Heidelberg and at the medical institutes of the University of Cologne. After the National Socialist’s rise to power, he was forbidden to practice medicine in Germany. William Levison emigrated to the U.S. in 1934, attaining citizenship in 1940.

William Levison worked first as an assistant at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, then at the Newark Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. In November, 1942 he was drafted and became a lieutenant in the medical corps of the U.S. Army. First stationed in various parts of the United States, he was later sent to the research station of a hospital in Hawaii, where he became a captain. On November 19, 1941 he married Charlotte Engel. They had a daughter – Judith Eve (born 1950) – who continued the family tradition and became a physician herself By December 1950 William Levison became a Certified Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and Fellow of the American College of Physicians. In 1951 he was elected to the Board of Governors of the New Jersey Diabetes Association. With a group of physicians, he founded Camp Nejeda , a vacation camp for children with diabetes.

Further information and documents

William and (Charlotte) Engel Levison Collection, AR 25001

https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/19421