I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately in university institutes, but in a bedroom.

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Rita Levi-Montalcini in her laboratory at the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Rome, 1978 © Umberto Pizzi

The neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, Italy, in 1909. She com-pleted her degree in medicine at the University of Turin in 1936. She worked as assis-tant in the laboratory of neurohistologist Giuseppe Levi until the introduction of Fascist laws in 1938 barred Jews from academic careers. Thereupon, inspired by an article by embryologist Viktor Hamburger, she constructed a laboratory in her own bedroom to secretly conduct research on nerve growth, using silver staining pro-cesses on chicken embryos. During the Second World War she had to flee twice, first to the Italian countryside and then to live under a false identity in Florence. Nevertheless, during this time Levi-Montalcini continued her experiments as well as volunteering as a doctor at a refugee camp. 

Nerve fiber photographed in Rita Levi-Montalcini‘s laboratory © Permission Granted by Bernard Becker Medical Library at Washington University School of Medicine

In 1946 she was invited to take up a research position under Viktor Hamburger at Washington University, where she remained for 30 years – holding the position of professor from 1958 onward. In 1986 she shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with her colleague Stan ley Cohen for their discovery of the nerve growth factor back in 1952. She also earned many awards for her research, established a research unit in Rome, and founded the European Brain Research Institute. Levi-Montalcini served as a Senator for Life in the Italian Senate from 2001 until her death in 2012, aged 103.