His work anticipated the evolution of television, satellites, cellular telephones, electronic remote boxes and wireless internet, and their demands on increasingly congested airwaves.
[6] Growing up in an uneducated family of Jewish-Russian descent, Levin was accepted by Harvard University as an undergraduate in 1940 at the age of sixteen, after skipping two grades at Newton High School in Queens, New York.
[10] For forty years spanning five decades, Levin researched, published, and proposed innovative economic and regulatory solutions that anticipated — and later addressed — the problems of competing rights and access to the airwaves, or electromagnetic spectrum, and its overuse and congestion.
[11][12][13][14] Focusing on its political ramifications, Levin's work is also considered by many economists to be the first to illustrate the economic necessity and benefits of equitable, global allocation of the airwaves as a limited resource, and diversification of its ownership.
Among his proposals was a pricing mechanism that, in effect, ensured that latecomer users and emerging, underdeveloped countries would not be deprived of their use of the airwaves by the world powers or monopolies controlling the market.
[28][29][30][31] Three years after his death, in 1995, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began implementing Levin's long controversial proposals by licensing and auctioning off portions of the radio spectrum, or broadcast frequencies, culminating in the U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996.
[53] The chair supported Levin's research that served as the basis for numerous articles and presentations, as well as his books The Invisible Resource – Use and Regulation of the Radio Spectrum (1971)[54] and Fact and Fancy in Television Regulation – An Economic Study of Policy Alternatives (1980),[55] and initial groundwork for the follow-up book Harvesting the Invisible Resource – Global Spectrum Management for Balanced Information Flows (originally scheduled for publication in 1994.
[60] At the time of his death, he was at work on a subsequent book, Harvesting the Invisible Resource – Global Spectrum Management for Balanced Information Flows,[61] which was to be published by Oxford University Press.
[62][63] He also published numerous scholarly papers on public policies towards television broadcasting, space satellites and the radio spectrum resource, and participated frequently in conference panels on the same, for the American Economics Association, the Annenberg Washington Program, the Atlantic Economic Society, the International Institute of Communications, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the International Communications Association, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, the Pacific Telecommunications Council, the Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conferences, and the Western Economic Association International.
With zeal, optimism, humor and irony, he proposed innovative policies regarding orbit spectrum assignments and broadcast frequency auctions to skeptical and dismissing industry officials.
His proposals were vindicated four years after his death with the passage of the U.S. Telecommunications Act – a 'promised land' he'd seen but didn't live to experience.In 1986, Levin was elected to membership in the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C., an association of persons deemed to "have done meritorious original work in science, literature, or the arts, or ... recognized as distinguished in a learned profession or in public service".
[79] He worked with public figures ranging from Eleanor Roosevelt and Fred Friendly to George McGovern, and contributed opinion pieces to various journals including The New York Times and The Nation.