The oldest Nobel Prize winner - Rita Levy-Montalcini has died and is 103 years old

Levy-Montalcini won the Nobel Prize in 1986, thanks to a breakthrough discovery in the discovery of the neural factors for growth

The oldest Nobel Prize winner - Rita Levy-Montalcini has passed away and she is 103 years old. Levy-Montalcini won the Nobel Prize in 1986, thanks to a breakthrough discovery for the discovery of the neural factors of growth.

Levy-Montalcini was born in Turin to a Jewish family with origins in Spain and Italy. Levy-Montalcini decided to study medicine partly because she experienced the death of her nanny from cancer.

Levy-Montalcini studied medicine and engaged in developmental research, but in the late XNUMXs she was removed from her position by Mussolini's fascist regime because of her Jewishness. She set up a makeshift laboratory in her home and continued underground research, until she had to flee with her family following the Nazi occupation. After the war she worked as a doctor in refugee camps and was later invited to return and do research in the United States.

In her research in exile in America, she discovered that the body produces a substance that affects the control of the growth and division of nerve cells, a discovery that was of great importance in the study of cancer processes and other diseases. In 1986 she received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery together with Professor Stanley Cohen. In the 60s, Levi Montalcini returned to Italy and, among other things, chaired the National Research Council.

On her last visit to Israel in 2008, she was received as the guest of honor at the Technion for a "great show of support for the Israeli academy". Levy-Montalcini visited the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion and met with two Nobel laureates in chemistry, Professors Avraham Hershko and Aharon Chachanover, as well as researchers from the faculty.
Levy-Montalcini was considered a friend of Israel, she visited Israel many times and stood up against European attempts to impose an academic boycott on Israel.