Arthur Levinson became chief executive officer of Genentech in July 1995. Levinson was appointed a member of the board of directors that same year and was named chairman of the board in 1999.

Levinson joined the company in 1980 as a senior scientist, and he subsequently held the position of staff scientist and director of Cell Genetics at Genentech. He became vice president of Research Technology in 1989, vice president of Research in 1990, senior vice president of Research in 1992, and senior vice president of Research and Development in 1993. He has been a member of Genentech's executive committee since 1990. Prior to his employment with Genentech, Levinson was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of microbiology at the University of California, San Francisco.

During his career, Levinson has served on the editorial boards of Molecular Biology and Medicine, Molecular and Cellular Biology, The Journal of Virology, and Virology. He also served on the boards of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the California Healthcare Institute. Levinson has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific articles and has been a named inventor on 11 United States patents, including inventions in the research of production of recombinant proteins.

Levinson sits on the board of scientific consultants for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and is a member of the advisory councils for the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3), the Princeton University Department of Molecular Biology, and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, also at Princeton. He also serves on the board of the Technology Network.

Levinson serves on the corporate boards of Apple Inc. and Google Inc.

Levinson received the Irvington Institute's 1999 Corporate Leadership Award in Science and was honored the same year with the Corporate Leadership Award from the National Breast Cancer Coalition. He was inducted into the Biotech Hall of Fame at the 2003 Biotech Meeting of chief executive officers. BusinessWeek named Levinson one of the "Best Managers of the Year" in 2004 and 2005, and Institutional Investor named him "America's Best CEO" in the biotech category four years in a row (2004-2007). In 2006, Princeton University awarded Levinson the James Madison Medal for a distinguished career in scientific research and in biotechnology. Also in 2006, Barron's recognized Levinson as one of "The World's Most Respected CEOs," and the Best Practice Institute placed Levinson on their "25 Top CEOs" list.

Levinson received his Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry from the University of Washington, Seattle and earned a doctorate in biochemistry from Princeton University.