INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY Image: Wikimedia Commons. On International Women's Day I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate, on my blog, a wonderful Italian woman that some of you may not have heard about. She is Rita Levi Montalcini and she is nearly 101 years old. Rita Levi Montalcini is a Cavaliere di Gran Croce, an Italian Life Senator and a Nobel laureate for her work with Stanley Cohen on nerve growth factor. She is the oldest living Nobel laureate. Born in Turin to a Sephardic Jewish family, Rita Levi Montalcini decided early on that she wanted to go to medical school. She overcame her father's opposition, which was based on a traditional view of a woman's role, and graduated from the Turin Medical School in 1936 - just in time to be barred from her professional work by the Mussolini government. Undaunted, she set up a laboratory in her home and in 1943 she fled, with her family, to Florence, where she set up a second laboratory. She returned to Turin in 1945 and was invited to work at the Washington University in St Louis, where she was made a full Professor in 1958. She returned to work in Rome in 1961. She continues to be academically active and to publish her works. In 2009 she told a Times interviewer that she had never married because she had not wanted to be "dominated" in the way that her mother was and that she puts her longevity down to getting up at 5 am, working hard to keep her brain active and eating only one meal a day, at lunchtime. Rita Levi Montalcini, I salute your intelligence, your integrity and your beauty. Rita Levi Montalcini fell and broke her femur two weeks ago. I am sure you will join me in wishing her a speedy recovery.  Author : Welshcakes Limoncello |
