Arthur Levain was a young physicist and a colleague of Professor Antelle in the French novel La Planète des singes. Accompanied by Antelle and Ulysse Mérou, he travelled aboard a spaceship to the star Betelgeuse. Levain lost his nerve in his first encounter with the apes on the planet Soror and was shot and killed quickly by the hunter's guns, but his death allowed Mérou a chance to escape. A female ape struck a pose sitting on his corpse for a chimp photographer.
Notes
- The French word 'physicien', from the source novel, was mis-translated into English as 'physician' by Xan Fielding; the word actually means 'physicist'. Other-language versions correctly translate as 'physicist'.
Trivia
- Levain's personality is closest to that of Landon in the movie adaptation, Planet of the Apes, but it is Dodge who is shot and killed in his first encounter with the apes, and Taylor discovers him as a stuffed and mounted display in the ape museum shortly afterwards. Levain, like Dodge, is also shot and killed during the hunt, but the last we see of him is a female gorilla standing over his dead body with a photo shot being taken by a chimpanzee photographer.