April 22 2009 was a special day for neuroscientists. It was the day that Nobel prize-winner, Rita Levi-Montalcini celebrated her 100th birthday.
Born with a twin sister in Turin, Italy, Rita Levi-Montalcini grew up in a loving family enriched by intellect and culture. Her father had strong aspirations for his daughter, but he believed that a professional career would interfere with being a wife and mother. Rita knew that she was not cut out for a purely domestic role and she persuaded her father to allow her to go to medical school in Turin. She became a student of the Italian histologist, Giuseppe Levi who trained her in biological science. In 1936 she graduated from medical school and began training in neurology and psychiatry.
That same year, Mussolini issued the "Manifesto per la Difesa della Razza", signed by ten Italian 'scientists', which pre-empted laws barring academic and professional careers to non-Aryan Italian citizens. By 1940, when Belgium was about to be invaded by the German army, the Levi-Montalcini family, who were Jewish, were forced to choose between emigrating to the USA or staying in Italy.
They stayed. Levi-Montalcini’s first laboratory was at home in her bedroom but heavy bombing forced them out of Turin. Undaunted, she rebuilt her lab in their new home and carried on with her experiments with chick embryos. But that period too was short-lived because they fled and lived underground in Florence until the end of the war. In 1944, she became a doctor in a refugee camp.
Back in Turin after the war ended, Levi-Montalcini resumed her research at the University of Turin where her experiments in chick embryos changed the course of her life and the course of developmental neuroscience. In 1947 she received an invitation to work at Washington University in St Louis, USA, which was supposed to be only a temporary assignment. But in 1958 she was appointed Full Professor, so she stayed. In 1962 she also established a research unit in Rome, dividing her time between the two cities. From 1969 to 1978 Levi-Montalcini was Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research. She retired in 1978.
Levi-Montalcini pioneered research into Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) in experiments devised in her bedroom laboratory. Her findings are fundamental in our understanding of the role of trophic factors in the control of embryonic tissue development. Her seminal findings concerning the role of NGF have opened new areas of research in neuronal plasticity and repair, with implications for neurodegenerative diseases. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986 for physiology or medicine, which she shared with her colleague Stanley Cohen. Among the many accolades that have rewarded her achievements, Levi-Montalcini was the first woman to become a full member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome. In 1987, she received the National Medal of Science, the highest honour in American science, and in 2001 she was nominated Senator-for-Life by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Her book, In Praise of Imperfection: My Life and Work, was published in 1989.