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Louis Rapkine
Louis Rapkine (July 14, 1904 – December 13, 1948) was a French biologist, specializing in embryology and enzymology. He is best known for his role in saving numerous French scientists from persecution during World War II, and in rebuilding the French scientific community and its institutions after the war.
Rapkine was born in the town of Tikhinichi (Belarusian: Ціхінічы) in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. As a result of anti-Jewish activity including the Kiev pogrom of 1905, his parents Israël Rapkine and Ida Sorkine moved to Paris in 1911. The family moved again in 1913 to Montréal, where Rapkine studied medicine at McGill University from 1921 to 1924. He returned to Paris in 1924.
Rapkine married Sarah Malamud in New York in 1929, and their daughter Claude was born in Paris in 1932.
Rapkine became a researcher in Paris and at Cambridge. He pursued biochemical research on the metabolic and developmental roles of sulfhydryl compounds, working initially with Charles Pérez and Maurice Caullery at the Roscoff Maritime Station in 1925. He then worked at the Collège de France under Emmanuel Fauré-Fremiet in 1926.
In 1927, working under René Wurmser, Rapkine began a long research career at the Institut de biologie physico-chimique in Paris, where he served as deputy head of the biophysics department from 1936 to 1940. He published a seminal paper in this area with Serbian biochemist Pavle Trpinac in 1939.
As a foreigner in France in 1936, Rapkine was prohibited from engaging in political activity. According to the Collège de France:
He therefore secretly established the Comité d'Accueil et d'Organisation du Travail des Savants Étrangers (Committee for Hosting and Organizing Work for Foreign Scientists) with support from several scientists, including Paul Langevin, Jean Perrin, Edmond Bauer, Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie, and Jacques Hadamard. This committee was established to host Jewish academics who were refugees from Central Europe. Louis Rapkine secured the necessary funding for his initiative, which he then extended to refugees fleeing from Fascism in Spain and Portugal. The committee received funding from the government, but operated using private funds, for which official recognition of the organization by the Front Populaire was crucial. It received donations notably from the Rothschild family, André Mayer, and Robert Debré.
Rapkine, who was 35 at the outbreak of World War II, suspended his research career to devote himself to the French war effort until the end of hostilities. The French government sent Rapkine to London in January 1940, on an official mission to secure a supply of coal for French industrial and military purposes. While in England, he assisted James Crowther in creating an Anglo-French Society of Sciences to formalize scientific cooperation between the two countries. In June 1940, after France's surrender to Germany, Rapkine advocated for the Society to help French scientists find refuge in the United Kingdom, but the Society dissolved when hostilities between France and England foreclosed scientific cooperation. Rapkine and Henri Laugier left London to continue their efforts in the United States.
Louis Rapkine
Louis Rapkine (July 14, 1904 – December 13, 1948) was a French biologist, specializing in embryology and enzymology. He is best known for his role in saving numerous French scientists from persecution during World War II, and in rebuilding the French scientific community and its institutions after the war.
Rapkine was born in the town of Tikhinichi (Belarusian: Ціхінічы) in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. As a result of anti-Jewish activity including the Kiev pogrom of 1905, his parents Israël Rapkine and Ida Sorkine moved to Paris in 1911. The family moved again in 1913 to Montréal, where Rapkine studied medicine at McGill University from 1921 to 1924. He returned to Paris in 1924.
Rapkine married Sarah Malamud in New York in 1929, and their daughter Claude was born in Paris in 1932.
Rapkine became a researcher in Paris and at Cambridge. He pursued biochemical research on the metabolic and developmental roles of sulfhydryl compounds, working initially with Charles Pérez and Maurice Caullery at the Roscoff Maritime Station in 1925. He then worked at the Collège de France under Emmanuel Fauré-Fremiet in 1926.
In 1927, working under René Wurmser, Rapkine began a long research career at the Institut de biologie physico-chimique in Paris, where he served as deputy head of the biophysics department from 1936 to 1940. He published a seminal paper in this area with Serbian biochemist Pavle Trpinac in 1939.
As a foreigner in France in 1936, Rapkine was prohibited from engaging in political activity. According to the Collège de France:
He therefore secretly established the Comité d'Accueil et d'Organisation du Travail des Savants Étrangers (Committee for Hosting and Organizing Work for Foreign Scientists) with support from several scientists, including Paul Langevin, Jean Perrin, Edmond Bauer, Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie, and Jacques Hadamard. This committee was established to host Jewish academics who were refugees from Central Europe. Louis Rapkine secured the necessary funding for his initiative, which he then extended to refugees fleeing from Fascism in Spain and Portugal. The committee received funding from the government, but operated using private funds, for which official recognition of the organization by the Front Populaire was crucial. It received donations notably from the Rothschild family, André Mayer, and Robert Debré.
Rapkine, who was 35 at the outbreak of World War II, suspended his research career to devote himself to the French war effort until the end of hostilities. The French government sent Rapkine to London in January 1940, on an official mission to secure a supply of coal for French industrial and military purposes. While in England, he assisted James Crowther in creating an Anglo-French Society of Sciences to formalize scientific cooperation between the two countries. In June 1940, after France's surrender to Germany, Rapkine advocated for the Society to help French scientists find refuge in the United Kingdom, but the Society dissolved when hostilities between France and England foreclosed scientific cooperation. Rapkine and Henri Laugier left London to continue their efforts in the United States.