We wrote about the Nobel Prize-winning neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who wanted to become a doctor after her family friend died of cancer, continued her studies by establishing a laboratory in her bedroom due to the difficulties in her life, and managed to make her name known.
Levi-Montalcini was born on April 22, 1909 in Torina, Italy. She was born with her twin sister, Paola, as the youngest of four children to Italian Jewish parents whose roots date back to the Roman Empire. As Levi-Montalcini's parents, her father is Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and mathematician, and her mother, Adele Montalcini, who is a painter.
Initially considering becoming a writer, Levi-Montalcini decided to enroll in the University of Turin School of Medicine after seeing a close family friend die of cancer. Here, her interest in the nervous system was heightened by neurohistologist Giuseppe Levi. Levi-Montalcini, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1936, decided to stay at the university as Levi's assistant. But this situation was interrupted by the introduction of some laws in 1938.
Levi-Montalcini, who did not continue his education, set up a laboratory in the bedroom of her house in Turin during World War II. Here, Levi-Montalcini, who studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos, discovered that nerve cells die when they have no target. This discovery laid the groundwork for much of her later research. She told about this work years later in the science documentary film "Death by Design / The Life and Times of Life and Times" (1997).
In September 1943, with the German invasion of Italy, Levi-Montalcini and her family fled to Florence. Here, the family, who had survived the Holocaust under false identities, returned to Turin in 1945 after the liberation of Florence in August 1944. Meanwhile, Levi-Montalcini volunteered her medical expertise for Allied healthcare.
The following year, University of Washington professor Viktor Hamburger became interested in two of Levi-Montalcini's articles published in foreign scientific journals and awarded a one-term research fellowship in her laboratory. Later, Hamburger offered Levi-Montalcini a research assistant position.
In 1952, she achieved her first major job, succeeding in isolating "nerve growth factor" (NGF) from observations of certain cancerous tissues that cause nerve cells to grow extremely rapidly. Levi-Montalcini, who did not compare the nerve growth produced by the tumor to anything he had seen before, realized that the nerves had taken over the areas that would turn into other tissues and even entered the vessels in the embryo. But the nerves failed to grow in the arteries that would flow back into the tumor from the embryo, leading Levi-Montalcini to think that the tumor itself was releasing a substance that stimulated the growth of the nerves.
Levi-Montalcini, who succeeded to become a professor in 1958, continued her studies by establishing her second laboratory in Rome in 1962. The following year, she continued to make a name for herself as the first woman to win the Max Weinstein Award for her outstanding contribution to neurological research. She retired in 1977 and took a position as manager of the Cell Biology Institute of the Italian National Research Council in Rome. Levi-Montalcini, who retired from this position in 1979, continued to work as a visiting professor.
Levi-Montalcini, who was one of the first scientists in the 1990s to draw attention to the importance of the mast cell in human pathology, won the Nobel Prize in 1986, along with Stanley Cohen, in the physiology or medicine category. Levi-Montalcini and Cohen won this award for their research on nerve growth factor, the protein that causes cell growth due to stimulated nerve tissue.
In 2001, she was recognized as a "Senator for Life" in the Italian Senate by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Levi-Montalcini, who founded the European Institute for Brain Research in 2002, was also the president of the institution.
Levi-Montalcini, who never married and had no children, died at her home in Rome on December 30, 2012 at the age of 103. Thus, Levi-Montalcini became the first Nobel laureate to reach her 100th birthday.