Scientists: Rita Levi-Montalcini
The only Nobel Prize winner to reach 100 years old is a neuroscientist called Rita Levi-Montalcini. She was born in 1909 in Turin, Italy, making her 103 when she passed away on 30 December 2012. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1986.
Levi-Montalcini, along with her colleague Stephen Cohen, discovered a protein called nerve growth factor (NGF). NGF is important for the growth, maintenance and survival of nerve cells (neurons). NGF has fundamental importance in understanding cell and organ growth and is important in understanding certain cancers and other diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease.
Facing adversity
When Levi-Montalcini began her academic career, she faced several obstacles because of her gender and religion. She lived in a time when women were not expected to work, especially in a field such as scientific research. She was also Jewish, and she lived through horrific persecution during World War II.
In 1936 Rita graduated with a degree in medicine and intended to embark on a career in research. Unfortunately, Mussolini (an Italian fascist politician, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943) issued a manifesto banning all non-Aryan citizens from having an academic career (non-Aryan citizens include Jewish people, Gypsies, homosexuals and other minority groups). This meant that anyone who was Jewish, like Levi-Montalcini, was barred from research.
Her family was not planning on emigrating from Italy, so she decided to set up a laboratory in her bedroom, where she continued her research. In 1943, Germany invaded Italy and Levi-Montalcini and her family were forced to move underground for a year. Levi-Montalcini took her research with her.
After the German army was forced out of Italy in 1945, she was hired as a medical doctor and assigned to a camp of war refugees to treat infectious diseases until the war ended later that year. She returned to her research at the University of Turin, and then the University of Washington, St Louis, where she discovered NGF.
Touched a nerve
NGF, a small protein, is involved in growth, maintenance and signalling of nerves within the body. Primarily it controls the growth and survival of sensory neurons.
Sensory neurons are responsible for converting an external stimulus, such as the heat or pain from touching a flame, into electrical impulses - called action potentials - in the body. This signal passes via synapses into the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and then on to motor neurons.
Motor neurons release acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction, a synapse between motor neuron and muscle fibre. This neurotransmitter triggers an action potential along the muscle fibre, leading to contraction of the muscle (the effector), which causes movement (the response).
Despite the enormous challenges Levi-Montalcini faced through her early career, she never fully gave up her research. As a result of her discovery of NGF, she received the Nobel Prize and many other awards.
In 1963 she was the first female scientist to receive the Max Weinstein award for outstanding contributions to neurological research. Then, in 1975, she was the first woman to become a member of the Pontifical Scientific Academy.
Levi-Montalcini was awarded her Nobel Prize 34 years after her discovery of NGF, as the implications of what she had achieved hadn't been realised in 1952 when she presented the findings.
She is still the only woman to have won a Nobel Prize in her field, among 20 male winners, making her one of the most influential women in science of the last century.
Update (11 January 2013)
This piece was published before the death of Rita Levi-Montalcini on 30 December 2012. The text has been changed to reflect this event.
Questions for discussion
- Do you think attitudes have changed regarding female scientists since Rita Levi-Montalcini's time? Why?
This article is part of the online content for ‘Big Picture: Inside the Brain’.
Image: Cells from the kidney that have been treated with NGF, making them more neural in appearance. Credit: Li Jun Tian and Linda Sharp, Wellcome Images.
