She won several prizes throughout the world for her significant research, including the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1986 for her discovery of NGF. For years she worked with the researcher Stanley Cohen, searching for “causes of growth,” during which time she discovered Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), which is responsible for the development and distribution of nerve cells. When the experiments proved the truth of Levi-Montalcini’s conclusions Hamburger offered her a post as lecturer at the university, where she remained for twenty-six years, continuing with research in neurobiology and on cancer cells. Since the papers she wrote together with her teacher during the war contradicted his own findings, Hamburger wished to conduct joint experiments to learn more about the nervous system. Louis, invited Levi-Montalcini to join him. In 1947 Victor Hamburger, then director of the zoology department at Washington University in St. When the war ended in May 1945 she went back to Turin with her family and returned to work as a research assistant for her teacher, Giuseppe Levi, at the University of Turin. After the liberation, Levi-Montalcini worked for several months as a physician in an Allied DP camp. With the German invasion of Italy in September 1943 and the establishment of the Fascist Salò Republic, roundups of Jews began and Levi-Montalcini’s family was compelled to find a hiding place in Florence, where they remained until Italy was liberated in August 1944. Despite her primitive working conditions, she succeeded in continuing her research the entire time, publishing her results in the United States after the war. These she warmed in a simple home incubator. There she rebuilt her laboratory under more difficult and primitive conditions than before, continuing her research on fertilized eggs which she obtained from local farmers (claiming she needed fertilized eggs for better nutrition for her children). When Italy entered the war on the side of Germany and the Allies began to bomb the country, the heavy bombardments of Turin in 19 forced Levi-Montalcini and her family to leave the city and seek refuge in a village. Among other things, her home became a meeting place for Guiseppe Levi’s students. Victor Hamburger’s research on the nervous system helped her a great deal and served as her model. These resulted in interesting discoveries, which she published in several papers. Together with her lecturer, Levi, who had also returned from a short stay in Belgium, she conducted experiments on the nervous systems of chicken embryos. Levi-Montalcini decided to continue independent scientific research, improvising a laboratory in her room in her parents’ home. However, fearing a German takeover of Belgium, she returned to Italy in 1939.įaced with two choices-immigration to the United States or remaining in Italy under the restrictions caused by the race laws-Montalcini’s family chose the latter. The race laws of 1938 prevented her from continuing any kind of specialized study, and in 1939, on the invitation of the institute for neurological research in Brussels, she traveled to Belgium to participate in a research project there. Upon completing degrees in medicine and surgery summa cum laude in 1936, she began to study neurology and psychiatry, though she wavered between continuing her medical studies and pure research. Levi-Montalcini’s fellow students included Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, who later won the Nobel Prize in physiology. Levi-Montalcini studied with Giuseppe Levi (1872–1965), a leading histologist and lecturer from whom she learned the systems and research methods that accompanied her throughout her life. Nevertheless he agreed to Rita’s wish to study medicine at the University of Turin at the beginning of the 1930s. A conservative man, Adamo Levi opposed higher education for girls, believing that a woman’s place was in the home as a wife and mother.
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