The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It is awarded annually on December 10 in Sweden, Stockholm. From 1901 there have been five winners of Italian origin who have received this prize. In 1986 Rita Levi Montalcini received this prestigious prize for her work on the discovery of growth factors along with Stanley Cohen.

Birth and early childhood

Rita and her twin sister Paola were born in Turin on April 22, 1909. Her father was called Adamo Levi. He was a gifted mathematician and electrical engineer. Her mother was called Adele Montalcini. She was a talented painter. Her elder brother Gino was a well-known architect and a professor at the University of Turin. Her elder sister Anna lives in Turin with her children and grandchildren and has had a lot of influence in Rita’s life. Her twin was a gifted and talented painter in Italy.

Although she was brought up in a wonderful family atmosphere their lifestyle was typically Victorian with her father taking all the decisions for the entire family. After some initial opposition from her father she studied Greek, Latin and Mathematics graduated from high school and joined medical school in Turin.

Her early career in medicine in Turin

Salvador E. Luria and Renato Dulbecco were two of her close friends and colleagues. They won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969 and 1975 respectively. All three of them were students of the famous Italian histologist Guiseppe Levi. He not only gave them a superb training in biology but also taught them to adopt a rigorous approach to scientific problems. Rita undertook her first research at the Anatomical Institute in Turin under his guidance. He taught her the rudiments of tissue culture. This was quite rare in those days.

In 1936 she graduated from medical school with a summa cum laude degree in Medicine and Surgery. In 1936 she enrolled herself in the three- year specialization course in neurology and psychiatry. She was perplexed on whether to pursue a medical career or conduct basic research in neurology but circumstances have a way of resolving certain issue and that was what happened in her life.

The effect of World War in her life

Mussolini issued a manifesto in 1936, the Manifesto della Razza and soon laws were introduced, which banned non-Aryan Italian citizens from pursuing an academic or professional career. She spent a short period of time as a guest in a neurological institute in Brussels. Just before the invasion of Belgium by Germany she returned to Turin in the spring of 1940 to be with her family. Although they had an option to immigrate to America the Levi family chose to stay back in Turin. She decided to build a small research unit in at home and installed it in her bedroom. She carried out her experiments using an incubator, a microscope and access to some literature available to her. Her inspiration was an article written in 1934 by Viktor Hamburger on the effects of limb extirpation in chicken embryos. She had barely begun her project when Guiseppe Levi who had escaped from Belgium when the Nazis invaded it had returned to Turin and fortunately he joined her. Together they began an investigation of chick embryos. They explored the effect of the periphery on developing nerve centers using silver staining. They made a number of important observations including the degeneration of cells in peripherally deprived sensory ganglia and the discovery of migratory processes in the cephalic nerves and cerebellum. During this time her house had become the meeting place for friends as well as the former students of Guiseppe Levi as well as a laboratory.

In 1941 the Anglo American forces heavily bombed Turin. So they moved to a country cottage where she resumed her research. In spite of the still more primitive conditions she completed a study of the acoustical vestibule centers of the chicks, a study that was published a few years later in the United States of America. In the fall of 1943, the German army invaded Italy so they were forced to flee to Florence where they remained underground until the end of the war.

In August 1944 the Anglo American armies forced the German army to leave Florence. At the Anglo American headquarters, Levi-Montalcini was hired as a medical doctor to treat the war refugees who were brought to Florence from the North. In May 1945 the war ended in Italy. She returned with her family to Turin and resumed her academic position at the University.

Moving to Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri

In the fall of 1947 she received an invitation from Professor Viktor Hamburger to join him and repeat the experiments, which they had performed earlier in the chick embryo. This invitation changed the course of her life. Although she planned to remain in St. Louis for about a year the excellent results obtained from the experiments made her postpone her return to Italy and she went on to stay there for a period of thirty years. In 1956 she became an Associate Professor and in 1958 she became Full professor a position she held till her retirement in 1977.

The collaboration with Viktor Hamburger, which began in 1947, has certainly been one of the most fruitful developments in neurobiology. Their observations in tumour implants eventually led to the discovery of the Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) by Levi-Montalcini. She committed her career entirely to the study of NGF and carried their joint efforts to a logical conclusion. This work earned her the prestigious Nobel Prize. By succeeding in unraveling the nature and biological importance of the NGF through a period of thirty years she not achieved a personal triumph but she also proved the persistence of the scientific spirit against all odds.

Going back to Italy

In 1966 she established a research institute in Rome. She now divided her time between St. Louis and Rome. In 1968 she became the tenth woman to be elected to the United States National Academy of Science. From 1969-1978 she also held the position of Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research in Rome. She carried out additional studies on NGF at the Institute. After her retirement in 1979 she became a Guest professor at the same institute.

The Nobel Prize and other awards

In 1986 she shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Stanley Cohen, an American biochemist who was her colleague and had been her student. She did her most important work with Stanley Cohen at Washington University. They studied mouse tumours implanted in chick embryos and isolated a nerve growth factor the first of many cell growth factors found in animals. He discovered Epidermal Growth Factors or EGF. This path breaking research earned them the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of NGF and EGF. NGF is a substance, which is found in malignant tumours and causes nerve fibres to grow rapidly. EGF is used in the treatment of severe burns. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986 for these discoveries.

In 1986 they also received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. These awards have honoured scientists, physicians and public servants whose accomplishments have made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment and even cure of many of the great crippling and even killing diseases of the century. They are also known as the American Nobels. Rita Levi-Montalcini received her award for her original concept that soluble substances govern cell growth and for the discovery of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) and Stanley Cohen received it for EGF.

Autobiography

In 1988 she wrote an autobiographical account of her life. It is titled “In Praise of Imperfection”. It is a very interesting and awe- inspiring book.

FAO Ambassador

Rita Levi-Montalcini was appointed as FAO Ambassador in 1999. She has written articles and editorials about the plight of the hungry for many major Italian and international newspapers. She has devoted countless hours of her life acting as a spokesperson for the FAO. She uses every major public opportunity she gets to educate the people on the importance of alleviating world hunger. She believes that as a public personality she can appeal to a large segment of the public and encourage them to support FAO’s global campaign against hunger.

In 1999 she participated in the Santa Cecilia World Food Day concert in Italy.

In the year 2000 she also participated in a charity event in Florence dedicated to the cause of alleviating poverty and malnutrition.

In October 2002 the Radio Vatican interviewed her with a focus on her role as FAO ambassador. In December 2002 the mayor of the city awarded her a prize in Verona. She used this occasion to speak of her role as FAO ambassador.

The Levi-Montalcini Foundation

After she returned to her native Italy and in 2001 was nominated a senator for life by the Italian President. In 2001 she declared that her namesake foundation started with her life savings would work to focus on education of African women. The Fondazione Levi-Montalcini has begun its philanthropy in Ethiopia. With the help of other Italian donors her foundation has expanded to about ten countries to in its cause to educate and empower the African people especially the women.

Rita Levi-Montalcini is a woman who has had a strong and very positive impact on humanity and her legacy will remain for many many decades not only as a neurobiologist but also as a sensitive and caring individual.