- Person
- Rita Levi-Montalcini
- Lived
- 1909–2012
- Field
- Neurobiology
- From
- Italian
The story
Most people retire long before their nineties. Rita Levi-Montalcini started a new research institute. In 2002 she founded the European Brain Research Institute, known as EBRI, in Rome, and became its president.
The institute was a natural continuation of a career devoted to the developing nervous system. In the 1940s, barred from Italian universities by the race laws, she had studied nerve growth in chick embryos in a laboratory in her bedroom. From 1947 she worked at Washington University in St. Louis, where she discovered nerve growth factor (NGF), a protein that certain nerve cells need in order to grow and survive. In 1962 she set up a research unit in Rome and divided her time between the two cities. She later directed the Laboratory of Cell Biology of Italy's National Research Council from 1969 to 1978, and in 1986 she shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Stanley Cohen.
Having faced so many obstacles herself, she spent much of the later part of her career making sure that other scientists had money, equipment and support. EBRI was the last and most ambitious expression of that commitment: an institute in Rome dedicated to studying the brain and its diseases, drawing on the line of research she had begun with chick embryos during the Second World War.
She was ninety-three when the institute was founded and served as its president. According to Italian accounts of her life, she continued to take part in its research until shortly before her death in December 2012 at the age of 103. Over those years her own group continued to study how NGF acts not only on nerve cells but also on the immune and hormone systems.
The research that grew from her work has given scientists new ways to study how nerves grow and to look for treatments for neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease. EBRI was a characteristic final act from a scientist who believed research must look to the next generation, and who never treated age as a reason to stop building.
Why it matters
EBRI gave Italy and Europe a dedicated centre for brain research, carrying Levi-Montalcini's work on nerve growth factor into the study of conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
About Rita Levi-Montalcini
Italian-Jewish neuroscientist who, barred by Mussolini’s race laws, ran a secret lab in her bedroom, and later discovered nerve growth factor, winning the 1986 Nobel Prize.
More about Rita Levi-Montalcini
- Rita Levi-Montalcini's bedroom lab led to a Nobel PrizeBarred from her university by Italy's 1938 racial laws, Rita Levi-Montalcini built a lab in her bedroom; that work led to the discovery of nerve growth factor and a Nobel Prize.
- Rita Levi-Montalcini spotlit mast cells in diseaseIn the 1990s, then in her eighties, Rita Levi-Montalcini was one of the first scientists to point out the importance of the mast cell in human disease.
- Rita Levi-Montalcini flew mice to Rio in her handbagIn 1952 Rita Levi-Montalcini flew to Rio de Janeiro with two tumour-bearing mice in her handbag, and the experiment she ran there gave the first definitive evidence of nerve growth factor.
- Rita Levi-Montalcini saw nerve cells die without targetsWorking with chick embryos during the war, Rita Levi-Montalcini found that young nerve cells die when the tissue they should connect to is missing, a key insight into how nervous systems form.
- Rita Levi-Montalcini opened the science of growth factorsNerve growth factor, discovered by Rita Levi-Montalcini and Stanley Cohen, revealed a whole class of signalling molecules, and their 1986 Nobel Prize honoured the discovery of growth factors.
- Rita Levi-Montalcini fought her way into medical schoolRaised in a home where her father ruled out university for his daughters, Rita Levi-Montalcini persuaded him at twenty to let her study medicine, and went on to win a Nobel Prize.
- Rita Levi-Montalcini backed education for African womenThrough a foundation bearing her name, Rita Levi-Montalcini supported the education and research of girls and young women in Africa and Italy.
Sources
- Rita Levi-Montalcini Wikipedia
- Rita Levi-Montalcini (Women who changed science) NobelPrize.org
- Rita Levi-Montalcini Wikipedia (Italian)
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.