Growing old doesn't have to mean the decline in one's mental powers, as the remarkable Rita Levi Montalcini proves

By Vida Adamoli 

 

 

 On April 22, 2009, Rita Levi Montalcini, her white hair elegantly coifed and wearing a smart navy blue suit, raised a glass of sparkling wine to celebrate her 100th birthday. An Italian neurologist, in 1986 she shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.

Addressing those gathered to honour her centenary, she declared, ’At the age of one hundred, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was twenty.’ 

Rita Levi Montalcini was born in Turin at the end of the first decade of the 20th century. In the 1930s the anti-Jewish laws, which came into effect under Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime, forced her to quit university. She responded by setting up an improvised genetics laboratory in her bedroom at home. It was in this make-do setting that she studied the growth of nerve fibres in chicken embryos, laying the groundwork for much of her later research. ‘’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.’

At the end of WW11,  Levi-Montalcini accepted an invitation to Washington University in St. Louis. It was supposed to be for one semester but she stayed for thirty years. It was there that she did her most important work: isolating the nerve growth factor (NGF) from observations of certain cancerous tissues that cause extremely rapid growth of nerve cells. She was made a Full Professor in 1958, and in 1962, established a research unit in Rome, dividing the rest of her time between Italy and St. Louis. From 1961 to 1969 she directed the Research Center of Neurobiology of the CNR (Rome), and from 1969 to 1978 the Laboratory of Cellular Biology.

In 2001 she became a Life Senator of the Italian Republic. Since then, when not busy with academic activities, she has been taking an active part in the Uppper House discussions.

Hard of hearing and with failing sight, Rita Levi Montalcini recently vowed to continue as a political force in her country. Her life and achievements are inspiring to all.  ‘Above all, don't fear difficult moments,’ she is quoted as saying. ‘The best comes from them.'
  Read More