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Portrait of Rita Levi-Montalcini

Science · Biology

Rita Levi-Montalcini

1909–2012 · Italian

Neurobiology; developmental biology

Rita Levi-Montalcini was an Italian neurobiologist who, barred from academic life by Mussolini's antisemitic laws, carried out research on chick embryos in a makeshift laboratory in her bedroom during the Second World War. At Washington University in St Louis she discovered nerve growth factor (NGF), which Stanley Cohen helped isolate, and the two shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She became an Italian senator for life and was the first Nobel laureate to live to 100.

How to spot them

  • ▸Nerve growth factor (NGF); shared Nobel with Stanley Cohen, 1986
  • ▸Secret home laboratory in her bedroom during the war, studying chick embryos
  • ▸Italian Senator for Life; lived to 103
  • ▸Autobiography 'In Praise of Imperfection'

Key discoveries & works

Discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF) (1950s)

A protein that stimulates the growth and survival of certain nerve cells

Rich sources of NGF found in snake venom and mouse salivary glands (with Stanley Cohen) (1950s)

These sources allowed the growth factor to be purified and characterised

In Praise of Imperfection (1988)

Her autobiography (Italian: Elogio dell'imperfezione)

Home bedroom laboratory studying chick embryo nerve development (early 1940s)

Research done in secret after Jews were barred from Italian universities

Key ideas

  • Growth factors: cells release chemical signals that control the growth and survival of other cells

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Turin in 1909 into a Jewish family; died in Rome in 2012 aged 103
  • •Graduated in medicine at the University of Turin, where fellow students included future Nobel laureates Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco
  • •Worked at Washington University in St Louis with Viktor Hamburger from 1947
  • •Shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Stanley Cohen 'for their discoveries of growth factors'
  • •Appointed Senator for Life in Italy in 2001
  • •Became the first Nobel laureate to reach the age of 100, in 2009

Drill it — 6 cards

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Sources