Levi-Montalcini, Rita
Italian-American neurologist 1909-
Rita Levi-Montalcini, born in Turin, Italy, is a prominent neurologist who discovered nerve-growth factor (NGF), a substance that controls how manycells make up the adult nervous system. This 1952 discovery has become an important clue to how life starts as a single embryonic cell and then marvelously differentiates into a complex organism made up of many different cell types. Levi-Montalcini's work has also contributed to the understanding of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, tissue regeneration, and the mechanisms of cancer.
Rita Levi-Montalcini discovered nerve-growth factor.Before the discovery of NGF, little was known about how organs signal developing nerve cells to link up with them or how messenger chemicals tell nerve cells when to grow and when to stop growing. Scientists now know of several hundred signals that affect cells and organs, and growth factors can be used to speed up burn healing and to diminish the side effects of the chemotherapy and radiation therapy that are used to combat cancer.
Levi-Montalcini's discovery of NGF and her other scientific work are nothing short of remarkable considering her tumultuous life circumstances. Her childhood was dominated by an unreasonable father who refused to acknowledge her love of science. Rather than encouraging her to pursue science and math courses, he insisted Levi-Montalcini attend finishing school where, much to her disgust, she had to study childcare, etiquette, and marriage. After completing finishing school, and largely against her father's wishes, Levi-Montalcini hired a tutor to teach her math, science, Latin, and Greek for eighteen months until she was able to pass the entrance exam to the University of Turin medical school. In 1936 she completed medical school, specializing in neurology and psychiatry.
After graduation, Levi-Montalcini accepted a research position at the university. After only three short years, she was forced to leave when the fascist anti-Semitic laws that governed Italy at the time drove her away. Not to be deterred, Levi-Montalcini constructed a crude home laboratory using scrap materials and continued her research under secretive conditions. After World War II, she moved to the United States where she continued her research at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1947 to 1981. In 1981 she returned to Italy, where she still lives.
In 1986 Levi-Montalcini was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, an award she shares with her American coworker at Washington University, the biochemist Stanley Cohen. She is also the founder of the Laboratory of Cellular Biology, one of the largest biological research centers in Italy.
Bibliography
McGrayne, Sharon. Nobel Prize Women in Science. Chicago: Birch Lane Press, 1996.
Random House Webster's Dictionary of Scientists. New York: Random House, 1997.
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