Draft:Dr. Adeline Levine

Adeline “Addie” Gordon Levine (December 12,1925-February 26, 2015) was one of the founders of the field of environmental sociology and was an expert on community responses to environmental disasters.Levine spent most of her academic career at the University at Buffalo in New York. She was a part of the sociology faculty from 1968 until she retired in 1990. Adeline published “Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People” in 1982 which became an incredibly important piece of literature and was recognized in the journal Science. She also went to co-publish the book “Helping Children: A Social History” with her husband, Murray Levine, in 1992. Beyond her work in environmental sociology, Levine also co-founded the Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, which assisted women who were harassed when seeking abortions in clinics in Buffalo. After retirement, Levine continued her advocacy work and continued writing about varying social issues. She passed away February 26, 2015 of cancer.

Early life and Education

Adeline was born in Geneva, New York in 1925 to Russian Jewish immigrants. She grew up during the Great Depression and World War II which gave her perspective for her works later down the line in her life. She went on to attend Hobart and William Smith Colleges for a year and became a registered nurse in 1948. While working at the Veterans Hospital in Montrose, New York in the tuberculosis ward, she met her husband, Murray Levine. Later on in life, she attended Beaver College (now Arcadia) and received a bachelor’s degree in 1962. Then, after her husband joined the faculty at Yale, Adeline began her PhD there. Adeline’s dissertation was titled “Martial and Occupational Plans of Women in Professional Schools: Law, Medicine, Nursing, Teaching.” This dissertation essentially examined women working in “Women’s Career Fields” (nursing and teaching) versus “Men’s Career Fields” (law and medicine). She received her Yale PhD in 1968 in sociology. She joined the faculty at the University at Buffalo in 1968.

Retirement and End of Life

Adeline retired from the University at Buffalo in 1990. While retired, she continued to write about contemporary social issues and continued her work with the Pro-Choice Network of Western New York. Beyond writing, she volunteered in the library at Buffalo Public International School 45. This school educates children from over 70 countries and who speak over 30 different languages. Adeline was passionate about education and teachers, so she helped to establish a way for donors to direct funds directly to the teachers in that school to support educational programming. Adeline worked with her husband again by publishing a column in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry regularly, titled “Reflections from the Ninth Decade.” This column was used to promote support for teachers, universal public education, and issues regarding the elderly. Adeline also published essays in The Buffalo News about varying events in her life. She passed away in February of 2015 of cancer. She is survived by her two sons, along with three grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, and four step-great-grandchildren. Her husband Murray passed away in May of 2020 of congestive heart failure.

Major Works

Adeline Levine’s most famous and recognized work is her book “Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People” which was published in 1982. Adeline visited the site in 1978, shortly after Love Canal was labeled a national disaster. The canal was used as a toxic chemical dumping site between 1942 and 1953 by Hooker Chemical Corporation. Then, the land was sold to Niagara Falls school board with the condition that Hooker Chemical was not liable for personal injury or property damage. A school was then built upon that land and a neighborhood surrounded the canal. The toxic chemicals eventually began to seep into the soil after corroding through the drums they were stored in. After long rainy seasons in the 1970s, toxic sludge eventually made its way into people’s basements and emitted toxic fumes. Levine’s book chronicles all of the history leading up to this disaster and gives sociological background into why this became a disaster. Her book details the development of local community organizations in response to the government’s lack of a response. The book covers a lot about the government’s reluctance to provide federal aid to the people of Love Canal since, at the time, a disaster like this had not happened before. The book and the research within it contributed to the understandings of how communities and families cope with disasters and how communities can mobilize to create change. This book launched Adeline into a leader of the environmental sociology field and in community response to environmental disasters. Because of her pioneering in the field, she was invited to multiple different countries to consult and present her research. Adeline even received an honorary doctorate from Arcadia University in 1989 for her work and contributions to the field.

The other noteworthy publication from Adeline is a book called “Helping Children: A Social History” that she co-authored with her husband, Murray. Published in 1992, the book examined the social history of helping services for children in the United States. They dive into the emergence of community-oriented services and how the relationship between services and their social context changes. The Levine’s wanted to examine the past to help better influence the future for people like psychologists, social service workers, policy makers, etc. This book is mainly used in psychology studies, however there are sociological aspects of the book as well.

External links

• State University of New York at Buffalo. University Archives