Rita levi montalcini died of consumption
•
Nobel Prize-winning biologist who was forced to keep work secret from Italy's Fascist regime dies aged 103
- Rita Levi-Montalcini helped improve knowledge of human cells
- Her research led to improved knowledge of tumours and senile dementia
- She continued her research in the face of anti-Semitic persecution in Italy
- Levi-Montalcini won the Nobel Prize for her work in the U.S in 1986
By STEVE NOLAN
Published: | Updated:
A Nobel Prize winning scientist who defied Italy's facist regime and and carried out key research into human cells underground during World War Two has died aged 103.
Biologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who helped improve our knowledge of tumours and conditions such as senile dementia, died at home in Rome today.
Her death was described as a great loss 'for all of humanity' by Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno who praised her 'civic conscience, culture and the spirit of research of our time.'
Nobel Prize winner: Rita Levi-Montalcini, pictured in the lab in the
•
Inspiring Thursday: Rita Levi-Montalcini
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.
In her biography, “In Praise of Imperfection” (1988), she wrote that “the subordinate role played bygd the kvinna in a society run entirely bygd men made the ställning eller tillstånd of a wife less than attractive”.
Rita grew up in an observant family, in the post-Victorian era which was dominated bygd a patriarchal culture. 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”. However, Rita wanted to become neither a wife nor a mother. She did not agree with the idea that a woman has to be a perfect wife and mother. 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
•
Finding the Good in the Bad: A Profile of Rita Levi-Montalcini
Editor's Note: Neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine in 1986, died December 30 at the age of 103. This story was originally published in the January 1993 issue of Scientific American.
As a feminist in a family with Victorian mores and as a Jew and free-thinker in Mussolini’s Italy, Rita Levi-Montalcini has encountered various forms of oppression many times in her life. Yet the neurobiologist, whose tenacity and preciseness are immediately apparent in her light, steel-blue eyes and elegant black-and-white attire, embraces the forces that shaped her. “If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize,” she declares.
Poised on the edge of a couch in her apartment in Rome that she shares with her twin sister, Paola, Levi- Montalcini recalls the long, determined struggle that culm