![]() Levi-Montalcini, who is the senior member of the Upper House, chose not to be the temporary president on this occasion. On 28–29 April 2006, Levi-Montalcini, aged 97, attended the opening assembly of the newly-elected Senate, at which the President of the Senate was elected she declared her preference for the centre-left candidate Franco Marini. On 1 August 2001 she was appointed as Senator for Life by the President of the Italian Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. In light of this episode serious criticism was levied at Levi-Montalcini. For this reason Germany banned Cronassial in 1983, followed by other countries. The drug turned out some years later to be able to cause a severe neurological syndrome (Guillain-Barré syndrome). Since 1975 the scientist promoted the drug Cronassial produced by Fidia from bovine brain. ![]() Montalcini with the Italian Pharmaceutical Factory Fidia. Her role in this institute was at the center of some criticism from some parts of the scientific community in 2010Ĭontroversies were raised by the collaboration of Prof. Rita Levi-Montalcini founded the European Brain Research Institute, covering the appointment of president. Louis.įrom 1961 to 1969 she directed the Research Center of Neurobiology of the CNR (Rome), and from 1969 to 1978 the Laboratory of Cellular Biology. She was made a Full Professor in 1958, and in 1962, established a research unit in Rome, dividing the rest of her time between there and St. It was there that she did her most important work: isolating the nerve growth factor (NGF) from observations of certain cancerous tissues that cause extremely rapid growth of nerve cells in 1952. Although the initial invitation was for one semester, she stayed for thirty years. Louis, under the supervision of Professor Viktor Hamburger. In September 1946, Levi-Montalcini accepted an invitation to Washington University in St. In 1943, her family fled south to Florence, and she set up a laboratory there also. (She describes this experience decades later in the 1995 science documentary Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times, which also features her identical twin sister Paola, who had entered a decades-long career in the arts.) Her first genetics laboratory was in her bedroom at her home. After graduating in 1936, she went to work as Giuseppe Levi's assistant, but her academic career was cut short by Benito Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto of Race and the subsequent introduction of laws barring Jews from academic and professional careers.ĭuring World War II, Levi-Montalcini conducted experiments from a home laboratory, studying the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos which laid the groundwork for much of her later research. She enrolled in the Turin medical school in 1930. Levi-Montalcini decided to attend medical school after seeing a close family friend die of cancer, overcoming the objections of her father who believed that "a professional career would interfere with the duties of a wife and mother". Her parents were Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a painter. The Guardian, Posted by Mo Costandi, Tuesday 1 January 2013.īorn in Turin to a Jewish family, together with her twin sister Paola she was the youngest of four children. On 22 April 2009, she was feted with a 100th birthday party at Rome's city hall. National Academy of Sciences, and a woman who refused to let her father’s ideas about gender or a state’s ideas about race keep her from doing some pretty great science. ![]() Since 2001, she has also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life.Īt the age of 103, Rita Levi-Montalcini died the longest lived Nobel Prize Winner in history, the first ever to reach a 100th birthday, the tenth woman to be elected to the U.S. Rita Levi-Montalcini (22 April 1909 - 30 December 2012), Knight Grand Cross, is an Italian neurologist who, together with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). History of Neuroscience: Rita Levi-Montalcini
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