The Periodic Table

About Primo Levi

In 1919 Primo Levi was born into a Jewish family in Turin Italy in 1919. Despite the anti-Semitic laws introduced to Italy by Mussolini's government he was able to complete his degree in Chemistry at Turin University in 1941. When the Germans invaded northern Italy in 1943 Levi escaped to the mountains to join a group of anti-fascist partisans but was soon captured and eventually deported to Auschwitz. He was liberated in January 1945. After the war he resumed his career as a chemist retiring only in 1975. His graphic account of his time in Auschwitz If This is a Man was published in 1947. Levi went on to write many other books including The Wrench If Not Now When? and The Periodic Table emerging not only as one of the most profound and haunting commentators on the Holocaust but as a great writer on many twentieth-century themes especially science. Primo Levi committed suicide on 11 April 1987.