Remembering Rita Levi who has got 101 years with a very productivity life

Rita Levi-Montalcini, Nobel laureate, a senator promoting science in Italy, supporter of women in science, is 100 years old today, 22 April 2009.

Rita Levi-Montalcini achieved a career of distinction despite the obstacles she faced in the early years. Despite the fact that her father was opposed to education for women, she was determined to study. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Turin, Italy, she enrolled in the Turin medical school in 1930, studying with Giuseppe Levi. After graduating in 1936, she went to work as Levi's assistant, but her academic career was cut short by Benito Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto of Race and the subsequent introduction of laws barring Jews from academic and professional careers. Nevertheless, she set up a laboratory in her bedroom in Turin, where she made some pioneering discoveries on programmed cell death.

After the Second World War, Rita Levi-Montalcini left Italy to work at the University of Washington, St Louis, Missouri, USA, where she was appointed professor. Working with chick embryos, she discovered Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), a small secreted protein which induces the differentiation and survival of particular target neurons. Although it was first met with scepticism on the part of the scientific community, this discovery was to be vital to our understanding of embryological tissue development and in providing innovative approaches to neuroprotection. In 1986 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, shared with her colleague Stanley Cohen.

Rita Levi-Montalcini on the day in October 1986 of the announcement
she had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology

In 1966, Rita Levi-Montalcini established a research institute in Rome, the European Brain Research Institute - Rita Levi-Montalcini (EBRI), dividing her time between St. Louis and Rome. In 1968 she became the tenth woman to be elected to the United States National Academy of Science. From 1969 to 1978 she also held the position of Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research in Rome, where she carried out additional studies on NGF at the Institute. After her retirement in 1979 she became a Guest professor at the same institute.

The Rita Levi-Montalcini Foundation was established by Rita Levi-Montalcini and her late sister Paola. The Foundation is committed to the education of African girls and young women, based on the strong belief that women play a key role in the future of the African continent. In 2002 IBRO received a generous donation from the Foundation to establish two Rita Levi-Montalcini fellowships for young women neuroscientists from Africa. The fellowships are ongoing and have been most successful. Rita Levi-Montalcini once said: "It is imperative to help the young, especially women, working in places where there is little support for science."

 

http://www.ibro.org/Pub/Pub_Main_Display.asp?LC_Docs_ID=4067

 

 

Rita Levi-Montalcini in Rome with Rita Balice-Gordon,
Women in World Neuroscience Committee member