![]() ![]() ![]() Soon after her graduation, the fascist regime published the “ Manifesto for the defence of Race” (1938), de facto banning “inferior races” from education. She trained with neurohistologist Giuseppe Levi, where she learnt how to visualize nerve cells under a microscope. Pursuing a professional career was highly discouraged - but Rita had set her mind to study medicine and was unstoppable! She enrolled at the University of Turin and graduated in Medicine and Surgery in 1936. Rita and her twin sister Paola were born in the early 1900s and raised according to traditional principles. ![]() But… These inspiring words come from one of the most determined and courageous scientists of the 20th century: Rita Levi-Montalcini. This could be the prototypical sentence of a motivational, sort of “discover your inner strength” type, teens-movie. ![]() “D on’t fear difficult moments, the best comes from them.” She died in Rome on December 30, 2012, at the age of 103.Rita Levi-Montalcini, Sci-Illustrate storiesįeaturing artwork & words by Dr. Rita continued conducting research every day, till the very end. In 2001, Italy honoured her by making her senator for life. She created an educational foundation in 1992 and set up the European Brain Research Institute in 2002. She firmly believed that women could do the work if given the opportunity. Rita strongly supported women in her own lab and work. As the first Italian woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science, Rita became a role model not only for women aspiring to be scientists, but for every woman. She was one of the only 25 women to have won in the 93-year history of the Nobel Prize, and of those 25, only five have won in medicine and physiology. She helped establish the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome and became its first director in 1962.įor the NGF discovery, Rita Levi-Montalcini and her colleague Stanley Cohen were awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. In 1956, Rita became an associate professor and a full professor in 1958. There, in 1951, she discovered the so called “nerve growth factor” (NGF), a humoral factor that plays an essential role in the growth and differentiation of sensory and sympathetic nerve cells. Louis, under the supervision of Professor Viktor Hamburger where she ended up staying for thirty years. In 1946, Rita was invited to Washington University in St. Regardless of the ban from the university, she transformed her own bedroom into her first genetics laboratory to continue her research on the growth of nerve fibers in chick embryos. After graduating summa cum laude in 1936 from the University of Turin, she worked as Giuseppe Levi´s assistant but her academic career was interrupted by Benito Mussolini´s 1938 Manifesto of Race and the introduction of laws preventing Jews from academic and professional careers. Once she entered the University of Turin, the neurophysiologist Giuseppe Levi introduced her to the developing nervous system. Eventually, she convinced her father she wanted to be a doctor and within eight months, she made up the gaps in her education and entered medical school. When she told her father about her decision of studying medicine and becoming a doctor, he objected that it was a long and difficult course of study, unsuitable for a woman. She did not agree with the idea that a woman has to be a perfect wife and mother. However, Rita wanted to become neither a wife nor a mother. Her father, Adamo Levi discouraged his daughters from attending college since he believed that “a professional career would interfere with the duties of a wife and a mother”. Rita grew up in an observant family, in the post-Victorian era which was dominated by a patriarchal culture. In her biography, “In Praise of Imperfection” (1988), she wrote that “the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men made the status of a wife less than attractive”. Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, Italy on 22 April 1909 and was one of the world´s most prominent scientific investigators of the human body’s nervous system. ![]()
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