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Rita Levi-Montalcini
(22 Apr 1909 - 30 Dec 2011)
Italian-American neurologist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1986 (with Stanley Cohen) for her discovery of NGF (nerve growth factor), which stimulates and influences both the normal and abnormal the growth of nerve cells in the body.
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Science Quotes by Rita Levi-Montalcini (2 quotes)
After a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom.
— Rita Levi-Montalcini
Autobiography, Nobel Foundation
As for the presence of large NGF [nerve growth factor] sources in snake venom and male genital organs, they may be conceived as instances of bizarre evolutionary gene expression.
— Rita Levi-Montalcini
The Nerve Growth Factor: Thirty-five Years Later, Nobel Lecture (8 Dec 1986).
See also:
- 22 Apr - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Levi-Montalcini's birth.
- In Praise of Imperfection: My Life and Work, by Rita Levi-Montalcini. - book suggestion.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
