19 Facts About Rita Levi-Montalcini

Rita Levi-Montalcini was an Italian Nobel laureate, honored for her work in neurobiology.

Rita Levi-Montalcini was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor.

Rita Levi-Montalcini's parents were Adele Montalcini, a painter, and Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and mathematician, whose families had moved from Asti and Casale Monferrato, respectively, to Turin at the turn of the twentieth century.

Rita Levi-Montalcini's father discouraged his daughters from attending college, as he feared it would disrupt their potential lives as wives and mothers, but eventually he supported Levi-Montalcini's aspirations to become a doctor.

Rita Levi-Montalcini lost her assistant position in the anatomy department after a 1938 law barring Jews from university positions was passed.

In September 1946, Rita Levi-Montalcini was granted a one-semester research fellowship in the laboratory of Professor Viktor Hamburger at Washington University in St Louis; he was interested in two of the articles Rita Levi-Montalcini had published in foreign scientific journals.

Rita Levi-Montalcini later retired from that position in 1979, however continued to be involved as a guest professor.

Rita Levi-Montalcini founded the European Brain Research Institute in 2002, and then served as its president.

Rita Levi-Montalcini earned a Nobel Prize along with Stanley Cohen in 1986 in the physiology or medicine category.

Rita Levi-Montalcini declared her preference for the centre-left candidate Franco Marini.

Rita Levi-Montalcini's father, Adamo Levi, was an electrical engineer and mathematician, and her mother, Adele Montalcini, was a painter.

Rita Levi-Montalcini had an older brother Gino, who died after a heart attack in 1974.

Rita Levi-Montalcini was one of the best-known contemporary Italian architects and a professor at the University of Turin.

Rita Levi-Montalcini had two sisters: Anna, five years older than Rita, and Paola, her twin sister, a popular artist who died on 29 September 2000, age 91.

The vision of Rita Levi-Montalcini came true with the issuing of the Trieste Declaration of Human Duties and the foundation in 1993 of the International Council of Human Duties, International Council of Human Duties, at the University of Trieste.

Rita Levi-Montalcini was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1995.

In 1999, Rita Levi-Montalcini was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization by FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.

In 2006, Rita Levi-Montalcini received the degree Honoris Causa in Biomedical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin, in her native city.

Rita Levi-Montalcini was a founding member of Citta della Scienza.