RITA LEVI-MONTALCINI

Rita Levi-Montalcini (b. 1909 in Turin, Italy) is Director Emeritus of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research (CNR) in Rome. She shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1986 with Stanley Cohen (b. 1922) of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, “for their discoveries of growth factors.” When I visited her in June 2000,^* she was 91 and still very active. We had two meetings, one at her Institute and the other at her home. She continues her research although she is no longer involved in laboratory work because of her deteriorating vision. Her and her coworkers' latest discovery is the important role of the nerve growth factor (NGF) in diseases that have to do with allergy. She received her latest honorary degree, from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for this new development. Eight people are working currently in her group and they have ongoing collaboration with others in Canada, England, Poland, and the United States with further interactions in Israel and Sweden…