born July 31, 1919, Turin, Italy
died April 11, 1987, Turin
Italian writer and chemist.
Two years after obtaining a degree in chemistry, Levi, who was Jewish, was captured by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz as a slave labourer. His autobiographical works
If This Is a Man , or Survival in Auschwitz (1947), The Reawakening (1963), and The Drowned and the Saved (1986)
are restrained and moving accounts of and reflections on survival in the Nazi camps. His best-known work, The Periodic Table (1975), is a collection of 21 meditations, each named for a chemical element. The lingering effects of his wartime trauma may have led to his suicide.