The youngest of four children, Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin on April 22, 1909. In her autobiography, “In Praise of Imperfection”, she writes: “The four of us enjoyed a most wonderful family atmosphere filled with love and reciprocal devotion. Both parents were highly cultured and instilled in us their high appreciation of intellectual pursuit. It was, however, a typical Victorian style of life, all decisions being taken by the head of the family, the husband and father.”
Convinced that men and women have the same mental capabilities, and only approach life differently, Levi-Montalcini resented her father’s decision to prevent her from enrolling in university.
“At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin,” the scientist writes in her autobiography.
The obstructions of a dominating father represented the beginning of a difficult ascent that only her persistent, demanding and passionate desire to help others, through the study of the developing nervous system, could eventually overcome. After graduating with high honors under the superb training of Giuseppe Levi, a famous Italian histologist to whom she refers to as the “Master”, Levi-Montalcini still had to fight hard for her career.
Because of her Jewish origins, Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime forced her to quit university and choose her bedroom as a home laboratory to study the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos.
"Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them. I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working not any more, unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom," the scientist said.
Finding the good in bad situations, self-discipline – she wakes up at 5 a.m., eats just once a day, keeps her brain active, goes to sleep at 11 p.m. – and passion for her work have been her keys to a serene, long-lived and successful existence. After World War II, she was offered the chance to repeat her experiments on chicken embryos at Washington University in St. Louis. Thirty years spent in St. Louis led her to the detection of a Nerve Growth Factor, a huge discovery that explains important mechanisms regulating the growth of cells and organs. This work won her the 1986 Nobel Prize in Medicine together with colleague Stanley Cohen. Today, Levi-Montalcini is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science and serves in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life.
At the age of 102, she actively takes part in the Upper House discussions and is dynamically devoted to investigating the functioning of the nervous system at the European Brain Research Institute, which she founded in Rome in 2001.
“Progress depends on our brain. The most important part of our brain, that which is neocortical, must be used to help others and not just to make discoveries,” the scientist said during an interview on the Italian television program “Che tempo che fa”. But what do brain and helping others have to do with one another? According to Levi-Montalcini our actions are mostly influenced by the limbic system, the emotional and instinctive part of the brain, which is the most primitive and can lead to harmful behaviors. Men should strive to gain control over their emotions and actions through the neocortex, the cognitive and younger hemisphere of the brain, and use it to understand the world and approach those who are in need. In other words, our future is in our brain.
Permanently interested in the role of ethics and women in science, Levi-Montalcini was often engaged in campaigns of political and social interest regarding antipersonnel mines, scientists responsibilities toward science and women’s rights in Africa. All of these themes are intensely treated in The Hourglass of Life, an inspiring memoir of Levi-Montalcini’s extraordinary life and career in neuroscience, which also focuses on the scientist’s stimulating effect on young people.
Studies on the human mind brought Levi-Montalcini to the conclusion that environment has a huge influence on the development of a man’s future personality and capacity to use his neocortex. “A child from the age of 2 or 3 absorbs what is in the environment and what generates hatred for anyone perceived to be different,” the scientist affirmed. A caring, respectful, intellectually stimulating and morally solid upbringing can increase one’s capacity to reason and “invent the world”. Turning 102 has not changed her attitude. Levi-Montalcini grows old with fun, focuses on the present, and doesn’t fear death, which can only affect her body, not the message she leaves behind.
