Rita levi montalcini accomplishments
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Rita Levi-Montalcini: A long life of achievement
In the second of our March series to celebrate Women’s History Month, we look at the long and successful life of Rita Levi-Montalcini. One of a pair of twin daughters born in 1909 to an electrical engineer and painter, Professor Levi-Montalcini won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicin in 1986, building on her legacy well into her 90s.
Professor Rita Levi-Montalcini
We are looking in this series of blogs at three women and their legacy to understand a little about what they achieved through their research, and how these achievements live on after their death as other researchers use their work and build on it in different ways. Earlier this month we looked at Marie Maynard Daly, and in the final part will assess the work of Elsie Widdowson. But in this post we will focus on one of the most famous Italian scientists to have ever lived, Professor Rita Levi-Montalcini.
For many people, they may know the name of Italian ne
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Rita Levi-Montalcini is a Nobel Laureate recognized for her work in the discovery and characterization of nerve growth factor. Nerve growth factor (NGF) promotes the growth and maintenance of the nervous system in a developing system. The majority of her career has been devoted to investigating the many aspects of NGF.
Levi-Montalcini and her twin sister Paola were born on 22 April 1909 in Turin, Italy, to her father, Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and mathematician, and mother, Adele Montalcini. In her autobiography she describes her family atmosphere as wonderful, loving, and with reciprocal devotion. Her father was a very traditional man and his daughters were not allowed to pursue a professional career, which would have interfered with their future roles as wife and mother. At the age of twenty, with the feeling she could not fit into her prescribed traditional female role, Levi-Montalcini asked her father’s permission to pursue a professional career. She filled
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ProfessorRitaLevi-Montalcini
Born22nd April, 1909 (Turin, Italy) - Died30th December, 2012 (Rome, Italy)
An Italian scientist, Rita Levi-Montalcini helped discover the chemical tools the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerves. This knowledge underpins current investigation into how these processes go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer.
(Photo credit: Bernard Becker Medical Library)
Family
Rita Levi-Montalcini was the daughter of a wealthy Italian Jewish family. Her father, Adamo Levi, was an electrical engineer and mathematician and her mother, Adele Montalcini, was a painter. Together with her identical twin sister, Levi-Montalcini was the youngest of four children. During the Second World War, Levi-Montalcini and her family were forced to abandon Turin with the invasion of Italy by the German army. They fled first to Piemonte and then to Florence where they lived underground until the end of the war. Seeing her mother play second-fidd