Leon Levy

Born to a Jewish family,[3] Levy attended Townsend Harris High School and studied psychology at City College of New York.

When he died in his late seventies, Levy was estimated to be worth a billion dollars, though his personal wealth might have been substantially higher were it not for his philanthropic interests.

His donations grew steadily, and during his lifetime, Levy and his wife, Shelby White, gave away more than $200 million, becoming well known for their philanthropic efforts.

The projects funded by their program, the Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications, include excavations at some of the highest profile archaeological sites throughout Greece and the Middle East, including Knossos, Aphrodisias, Kition, Ras Shamra, Sarepta, Mount Gerizim, Ekron, Lachish, Megiddo, Jerusalem, Pella, Jerash, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Assur, Nineveh, Nuzi, and Tepe Hissar.

In their 2006 book The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities – From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums, Peter Watson and Cecelia Todeschini lay out the dynamics of the illegal trade in antiquities and use Leon Levy and Shelby White as an example of collectors whose purchases may have led to unethical dealing in artifacts.

[12][13] In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame along with Alfred Jones, Bruce Kovner, David Swensen, George Soros, Jack Nash, James Simons, Julian Roberston, Kenneth Griffin, Louis Bacon, Michael Steinhardt, Paul Tudor Jones, Seth Klarman and Steven A.

[14] In 2002, Levy published a memoir, written with Eugene Linden, called The Mind of Wall Street: A Legendary Financier on the Perils of Greed and the Mysteries of the Market (Perseus Book Group).