Tuesday 30 December 2014

Despite being loosely supported for education initially & losing a job for socio-political reasons; this lady amused the world from home laboratory; the only nobel laureate to surpass 100 years life!!!



Rita Levi-Montalcini (22 April 1909 – 30 December 2012) is a Nobel Laureate honored for her work in neurobiology. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine alongside colleague Stanley Cohen for discovering nerve growth factor (NGF). Also, from 2001 until her death, she served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life. Rita Levi-Montalcini had been the oldest living Nobel laureate and the first ever to reach a 100th birthday. 
Her father discouraged her from attending college as he feared it would disrupt their lives as wives and mothers but he eventually supported Levi-Montalcini's aspirations to become a doctor anyway.After graduating with an M.D. in 1936, she went to work as Giuseppe Levi's assistant, but her academic career was cut short by Benito Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto of Race and the subsequent introduction of laws barring Jews from academic and professional careers.  During World War II, Levi-Montalcini would conduct experiments from a home laboratory, studying the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos, which laid the groundwork for much of her later research. Her first genetics laboratory was in her bedroom at her home.  Read more & watch the Video...