Born: 22 April 1909, Italy
Died: 30 December 2012
Country most active: United States, Italy
Also known as: NA
Rita Levi-Montalcini OMRI OMCA was an Italian neurobiologist. She won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with her colleague Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). Because of her scientific achievements, she also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life from 2001 until her death in 2012. She was also a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust.
Levi-Montalcini was made a full professor at Washington University in St. Louis in 1958. In 1962, she established a second lab in Rome, dividing her time between there and St. Louis. In 1963, she became the first woman to receive the United Cerebral Palsy Association’s Max Weinstein Award, for her significant contributions in neurological research. From 1961 to 1969, she directed the Research Center of Neurobiology of the CNR (Italy’s largest research council) in Rome, and from 1969 to 1978, the Laboratory of Cellular Biology. She was appointed as director of the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome in 1977, retiring from that position in 1979. Levi-Montalcini founded the European Brain Research Institute in 2002, and served as its president.