Rita was born on the twenty-second
of April, 1909, in Turin, Italy. She was one of four children, three girls and
a boy, she being a twin of one of the girls. Her mother was Adele Montalcini.
The family was wealthy and of Sephardic Jewish faith. The family was Victorian
in their values, and her father Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer, believed
women should not attend higher education as it would interfere in their role as
future mothers. The family, as a whole engaged in intellectual pursuits; thus,
it didn’t take much effort for the daughters to change his mind.
She studied medicine at the
University of Turin and in 1936, she graduated from medical school with a summa
cum laude degree in medicine and surgery.
After which she enrolled in a three year specialization program in
neurology and psychiatry. She did research on the effects peripheral tissues
have on nerve cell growth. But, because of her Jewish ancestry, Mussolini’s “Manifesto per la Defesa della Razza,”
(Manifest for the defense of the Race), caused her to lose her job. When things
became worse in Turin, the family escaped to the country side, and had to
follow that with going to Florence where the family remained in hiding during
the German occupation of Italy (1943-45). By 1944, the Americans cleared
Florence of the Nazis and she was able to surface and became actively involved
in nursing and caring for refugees suffering with infectious diseases. When the
war ended in 1945, she was able to resume her research at Turin.
In 1947, she accepted an invitation
to a post at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri by zoologist Viktor
Hamburger. Here she was to repeat the research performed before the war in the
study of the growth of nerve tissue in chick embryos.
In 1948, they discovered that a
variety of mouse tumors spurred nerve growth when implanted into chick embryos.
The two traced the effect to a substance in the tumor that they named
nerve-growth factor NGF. Levi-Montalcini further showed that the tumor caused
similar cell growth in a nerve-tissue cultures kept alive in the laboratory.
Stanley Cohen, another interested scientist, joined her at Washington
University, and he was able to isolate the nerve-growth factor from the tumor.
Levi-Montalcini planned to remain
only twelve months, but the excellent results of their work impressed her to
continue. In 1956, the University offered her the position as an associate
professor and two years later that of full professorship. In 1962, she
developed a research unit in Rome. She remained active both here and abroad.
She also held the position of Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the
Italian National Council of Research in Rome.
NGF was the first of many
cell-growth factors found in the bodies of animals. In 1986, Dr.
Levi-Montalcini received due recognition when she, along with her colleague,
Dr. Stanley Cohen, earned the Nobel Prize in medicine for the discoveries of
NGF and of EGF, epidermal growth factor, which is used in the treatment of
severe burns.
She published an autobiographical
work, In Praise of Imperfection, in
1988. At the following internet address she provides a short interesting
autobiographical sketch telling of her parents, sisters, and brother and war
experiences. Levi-Montalcini held dual citizenship of Italy and of the United
States. She passed away on the thirtieth of December 2012, at the age of 102.
http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1986/levi-montalcini-autobio.html
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