Retsef Levi

Key takeaways

Retsef Levi belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Retsef Levi to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Retsef Levi from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Retsef Levi (Hebrew: רצף לוי; born March 7, 1971) is an Israeli applied mathematician and management scientist. He is the J. Spencer Standish Professor of Operations Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In June 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, appointed Levi as a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Early life and education Levi was born on March 7, 1971, in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a brother of Israeli screenwriter Reshef Levi and Israeli author Yannets Levi. From 1990 to 2001, Levi served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Beginning in 1991, he was an intelligence officer of the elite Israeli Intelligence Corps, first as a lieutenant intelligence analyst (1990–1992), then as a captain (1992–1994) and then major, or Rav séren (1994–1996). While serving in the Israeli military, Levi graduated summa cum laude from Tel Aviv University in 2001 with a B.Sc. in mathematics. He then completed doctoral studies in the United States at Cornell University, where he earned his Ph.D. in operations research and mathematical programming in 2005 under professors Robin Roundy and David Shmoys. His dissertation was entitled "Computing Provably Near-Optimal Policies for Stochastic Inventory Control Models". Professors James Renegar and Shane Henderson also advised Levi's thesis.

Career Levi is a data scientist and former intelligence officer in the Israeli military. After receiving his doctorate, Levi completed postdoctoral research at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where he was the Goldstine Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Mathematical Sciences. He became an assistant professor of management in 2006 at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he held a position as a Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor. He was promoted to an associate professor with tenure in July 2009 and received the school's appointment as its J. Spencer Standish Professor of Operations Management in July 2010. Levi was associate editor of the peer-reviewed academic journals Management Science (from 2009 to 2014), Mathematics of Operations Research (from 2009 to 2015), Naval Research Logistics (from 2009 to 2015), and Operations Research (from 2011 to 2018). In 2021, Israeli minister of education Yoav Gallant appointed Levi to a panel of experts tasked with advising the government on the reopening of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel. Levi was a critic of the Israeli Ministry of Health's policy of closing schools during the pandemic, which he considered unnecessary.

Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, 2025 Levi is a critic of COVID-19 lockdowns and mRNA vaccines, and a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic. He has published papers on the mortality rates of COVID-19 vaccines. He wrote on Twitter in 2023 that “the evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people". On June 11, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that he appointed Levi as one of the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). However, Levi did not have medical, epidemiological, or immunological training, experience, or background. Levi was removed from his position on the ACIP in 2026 when a ruling in American Academy of Pediatrics v. Kennedy invalidated the entire committee's appointments.

Selected publications Sun, Christopher L. F.; Jaffe, Eli; Levi, Retsef (2022-04-28). "Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under-40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave". Scientific Reports. 12 (1): 6978. Bibcode:2022NatSR..12.6978S. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-10928-z. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 9048615. PMID 35484304. Levi, Retsef; Schurr, Efrat (January 22, 2024). "Miscarriage after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination: A request to report more details of the regression models and analyses". International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics. 131 (9): 1322. doi:10.1111/1471-0528.17767. PMID 38247342. Levi, Retsef; Magnanti, Thomas; Shaposhnik, Yaron (2024-05-01). "Scheduling with Testing of Heterogeneous Jobs". Management Science. 70 (5): 2934–2953. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2023.4833. ISSN 0025-1909. Levi, Retsef; Mansuri, Fahad; Jordan, Melissa M.; Ladapo, Joseph A. (2025-04-29). "Twelve-Month All-Cause Mortality after Initial COVID-19 Vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech or mRNA-1273 among Adults Living in Florida". medRxiv 10.1101/2025.04.25.25326460..

References

External links Profile at the Mathematics Genealogy Project Publications at ORCID

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Retsef Levi

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Retsef Levi claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Retsef Levi before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Retsef Levi ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Retsef Levi

In research: Retsef Levi appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Retsef Levi in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Retsef Levi is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1971 births, Cornell University alumni, Israeli management consultants, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Retsef Levi outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Retsef Levi in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Retsef Levi means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Retsef Levi out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Retsef Levi in simple terms?

Retsef Levi (Hebrew: רצף לוי; born March 7, 1971) is an Israeli applied mathematician and management scientist. He is the J.

Why does Retsef Levi matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Retsef Levi?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Retsef Levi.