Rita levi montalcini biography nobel prizes

Italian specialist (1909–2012)

Rita Levi-MontalciniOMRIOMCA (LAY-vee MOHN-tahl-CHEE-nee, LEV-ee -⁠, LEE-vee MON-təl-,^[3][4]Italian:[ˈriːtaˈlɛːvimontalˈtʃiːni]; 22 Apr 1909 – 30 December 2012) was let down Italian neurobiologist. She was awarded representation 1986 Philanthropist Prize rip apart Physiology features Medicine conjointly with teammate Stanley Cohen for say publicly discovery attention to detail nerve advancement factor (NGF).^[5]

From 2001 until her cessation, she along with served connect the European Senate hoot a Senator for Life.^[6] This contribute to was delineated due study her substantive scientific contributions.^[7] On 22 April 2009, she became the chief Nobel laureate to control the remove of 100,^[8] and depiction event was feted take up again a original at Rome's City Hall.^[9][10]

Early life leading education

Levi-Montalcini was born leave 22 Apr 1909 feature Turin,^[11] stay with Italian Individual parents counterpart roots dating back tell off the Romish Empire.^[12][13][14] She and disintegrate twin missy Paola were the youngest of quaternion children.^[15] Move up parents were Adele Montalcini, a master, and Adamo Levi, enterprise electrical inventor and mathematician, whose families had prudent from Asti and Casale Monferrato, each to each, to Torino at

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Rita Levi-Montalcini (b. 1909)

Rita Levi-Montalcini, ca. 1978

Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini was born into an intellectual, though traditional, family in Turin, Italy in 1909. Her father believed that a career would interfere with a woman’s role as wife and mother and thus would not allow Rita, her twin sister Paolo, and older sister Anna to pursue higher education and professional careers. At the age of twenty, realizing that she could not fulfill the feminine role envisioned by her father, Levi-Montalcini persuaded him to allow her to enter the University of Turin to study medicine. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin Medical School in 1936, and then completed a degree for specialization in neurology and psychiatry in 1940. Two of her university colleagues and friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, also were to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (in 1969 and 1975 respectively). All three were trained in biological science by the famous Italian histologist, Giuseppe Levi.

Fascist laws prevented Italian Jews from practicing medicine or working in universities at that time, so Levi-Montalcini was forced to work with neither support from nor connection to the outside Aryan society. Inspired by a 1934 article by

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Rita Levi-Montalcini: From Persecution to the Nobel Prize and an Honorary Degree From a Canadian University

Abstract

Rita Levi-Montalcini (RLM) is recognized as a prestigious and renowned researcher of her time. She was the fourth woman to earn the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1986 for the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). We review her biography and scientific discovery, and provide an example of why her discovery is still important. She had a special relationship with McGill University, Canada, which we describe. We searched for articles and books about her for biographical and scientific material and met with Dr. Claudio Cuello, Former Chair of McGill’s Faculty of Medicine. 

RLM was born in 1909 in Turin, Italy, where she had studied medicine. She started her career in research. Because of the anti-Jewish racial laws in Italy in 1938, she went underground and continued her projects in her bedroom. After the war, she visited St. Louis, USA, and conducted research there. Her experiments confirmed that tumors release a factor that causes nerve growth and cancer proliferation. Initially, scientists responded to this discovery with skepticism, but after its purification in 1959 and determination of its protein structure in 1971, NGF became widely accepted.