The Italian researcher faced prejudice and adversity as a woman and as a Jew, but went on to elucidate a growth factor essential to the survival of nerve cells
Editor's Note: Neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine in 1986, died December 30 at the age of 103. We are making this profile of her free online for the next 30 days. This story was originally published in the?January 1993?issue of Scientific American.
As a feminist in a family with Victorian mores and as a Jew and free-thinker in Mussolini?s Italy, Rita Levi-Montalcini has encountered various forms of oppression many times in her life. Yet the neurobiologist, whose tenacity and preciseness are immediately apparent in her light, steel-blue eyes and elegant black-and-white attire, embraces the forces that shaped her. ?If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize,? she declares.
Poised on the edge of a couch in her apartment in Rome that she shares with her twin sister, Paola, Levi- Montalcini recalls the long, determined struggle that culminated in joining the small group of women Nobelists in 1986. She won the prize for elucidating a substance essential to the survival of nerve cells. Her discovery of nerve growth factor led to a new understanding of the development and differentiation of the nervous system. Today it and other similar factors are the subject of intense investigation because of their potential to revive damaged neurons, especially those harmed in such diseases as Alzheimer?s.
The journey from Turin, where she was born in 1909, to this serene and impeccable Roman living room laden with plants and with the etchings and sculptures of Paola, a well-known artist, tested Levi-Montalcini's mettle from her earliest years. "It was a very patriarchal society, and I simply resented, from early childhood, that women were reared in such a way that everything was decided by the man, she proclaims. Initially, she wanted to be a philosopher but soon decided she was not logically minded enough. When her governess, to whom she was devoted, died of cancer, she chose to become a doctor. There only remained the small matter of getting her father, an engineer, to grant permission and of making up for the time she had lost in a girls? high school, where graduation led to marriage, not to the university. That ?annoyed me so much that I decided to never do as my mother did. And it was a very good decision?at that time, I could never have done anything in particular if I had married.? Levi-Montalcini pauses, leans forward and asks in- tensely, ?Are you married? ? She sighs with relief at the answer. ?Good,? she says, smiling.
After she received her father?s grudging consent, Levi-Montalcini studied for the entrance examination and then enrolled in the Turin School of Medicine at the age of 21. Drawn to a famous, eccentric teacher, Giuseppe Levi, she decided to become an intern at the Institute of Anatomy. There Levi-Montalcini became adept at histology, in particular at staining nerve cells.
Since Levi was curious about aspects of the nervous system, he assigned his student a Herculean labor: to figure out how the convolutions of the human brain are formed. In addition to the overwhelming undertaking of finding human fetuses in a country where abortion was illegal, ?the assignment was an impossible task to give your student or an established scientist,? Levi-Montalcini explains, her voice hardening. ?It was a really stupid question, which I couldn?t solve and no one could solve.?
She abandoned the project?after a series of unpleasant forays for subject matter?and with Levi?s permission began to study the development of the nervous system in chick embryos. Several years later she was forced to stop that work as well. Mussolini had declared his dictatorship by 1925 and since then anti-Semitism had grown in Italy. By 1936, hostility was openly apparent, and in 1939, Levi-Montalcini withdrew from the university, worried about the safety of her non-Jewish colleagues who would be taking a risk by letting her study.
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