Louis Rapkine

Rapkine was born in Belarus, in the town of Tikhinichi (Belarusian: Ціхінічы). 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 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.[2][3] He then worked at the Collège de France under Emmanuel Fauré-Fremiet in 1926, and in the biophysics department of the Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology (IBPC) in Paris under René Wurmser in 1927.[3] He published a seminal paper in this area with Serbian biochemist Pavle Trpinac in 1939.[4]

In 1936, as a foreigner in France, Rapkine was prohibited from engaging in political activity.[5] 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.[5]

After the outbreak of World War II, 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.[6] 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.[6]

In New York from 1940 to 1944, Rapkine and Laugier organized the rescue of French scientists and those of other nationalities fleeing occupied France for the United States and Great Britain, with assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation and the government-in-exile of Free France.[5] In 1940 alone, Rapkine's organization assisted 35 scientists in secretly emigrating from France. Rapkine was officially named the head of the New York Bureau Scientifique de la France Libre (Free France scientific bureau) in December 1941.[6]

Rapkine also continued to seek a haven in London for refugee scientists. In 1943, Rapkine assisted Crowther in founding the Society for Visiting Scientists (SVS). Under its auspices as France's representative, Rapkine again undertook to gather exiled French scientists in England. As early as October 1943, the project had obtained a formal agreement from the Provisional French Government, but travel had become impossible. Rapkine complained directly to General Charles de Gaulle about the delays, noting that some of the exiled French scientists had already resigned their positions, and suggesting that travel restrictions could be lifted if the scientists were invited as scientific counselors of the French Army.[6]

After the liberation of Paris at the end of August 1944, Rapkine was sent to London to establish a French scientific mission there, joined later by Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Through October 1945, the London mission hosted scientists returning from America, as well as those who had been isolated in France during the German occupation.[6]

Rapkine returned to Paris and created the cellular chemistry department at the Pasteur Institute. He became instrumental in securing American funds for exiled scientists to return to France or the United Kingdom, and for the re-establishment of French scientific facilities, including funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to re-establish the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) led by Fréderic Joliot-Curie.[5]

Rapkine died in Paris from cancer in 1948.

He has been cited for his intellectual and moral impact on scientists including the young Jacques Monod.[7]

In 1951, the Rapkine French Scientist Fund was established in his name. The fund, which assists in the purchase of tools and materials for scientific use, was overseen by Bethsabée de Rothschild. In 1985, the fund was reorganized under the name Pasteur Foundation, a part of the Pasteur Institute network in New York City.[8]