Rita Levi-Montalcini Dead at 103. (January 1, 2013)

Dr Rita Levi-Montalcini died at her home in Rome on 30 December 2012 aged 103. She received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with Stanley Cohen for their discoveries of growth factors. Her work showed, for example, how nerve growth factor directed nerve growth and her work was instrumental in furthering the study of diseases such as dementia.

Dr. Gerald D. Fishbach, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at Columbia put it this way: "I don’t use these words easily, but her work revolutionized the study of neural development, from how we think about it to how we intervene."

Her colleague and co-laureate, now an emeritus professor at Vanderbilt University said simply: "She had this feeling for what was happening biologically. She was an intuitive observer, and she saw that something was making these nerve connections grow and was determined to find out what it was."

In 1947 the embryologist Victor Hamburger invited her to work for a year in his lab at Washington University in St Louis. She stayed on where she was made a full professor in 1958.

 2001 saw the Italian government honour her by making her a senator for life where she championed scientific research.

In 1962, she was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome becoming its inaugural director, and in 2002 she set up the interdisciplinary European Brain Research Institute in Rome.

Dr. Levi-Montalcini  wrote in her 1988 autobiography, In Praise of Imperfection: "It is imperfection — not perfection — that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain, and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development."

Note added January 17, 2013:  Toward the end of his obituary in Nature 493, 306 (17 January 2013) doi:10.1038/493306a Ralph A. Bradshaw wrote --

 Rita has been described as ambitious, autocratic, generous, possessive, aristocratic, demanding, persevering, insightful and totally dedicated to her work. All are accurate. She had disagreements with many scientists who worked on NGF. However, as the importance of her discoveries became increasingly appreciated, she mellowed in her outlook (if not her drive) and seemed to accept the mantle of matriarch that was truly her due.