Moshe Levy (chemist) - Academic Career

Academic Career

As a post-doctoral fellow under Michael Szwarc, Moshe Levy was a member of the team who discovered "Living Polymers", which was a major breakthrough in the field of Polymers Science. The work was published as a one-page communication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Michael Szwarc received the Kyoto Prize for this work in 1987, acknowledging Moshe Levy for many of the breakthroughs leading to it. After a few years at the Technion and another year as a Research Fellow in Syracuse, he joined the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel. At the Weizmann Institute, he initially worked with Aharon Katzir, and later moved to the Plastics Research Department, which he headed from 1977 to 1983.

In 1982 he started working on solar energy. His worked focused on creating a chemical reaction that enables storing the energy produced by the sun so it can be transported to a user site, and then (after the reverse reaction) be used upon request. With several colleagues, he built the solar tower at the Weizmann Institute that is a center for solar-energy research. In 1993 he became an Emeritus Professor, but has remained active in research and service, including serving as the President of the Israeli Polymer and Plastics Society in 1993-1995 and Editor of Bulletin of the Israeli Chemical Society, "Chemistry in Israel". Moshe Levy has also spent time as a visiting scientist in a number of institutions, including Xerox Research Center (Rochester, New York), DuPont Central Research Center (Wilmington, Delaware), the University of Florida at Gainsville, and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.