"I'm 89. I'm very old. Perhaps I'm being vain, but my brain is still working as well as when I was a young woman. I enjoy working so much from a social, humanistic and scientific point of view . . . I think it's great that women live longer than men. It's a good thing to live for a long time if you believe in what you do and if your brain is working."
It is unlikely that anyone who was in Brussels for the Women and Science conference at the end of last month would dispute Rita Levi-Montalcini's assessment of her brain functioning. The very few men at the conference, organised by the European Commission and Parliament, may have had doubts about the advantages of women living longer than men, but it may not have seemed the best forum for airing those views.
Montalcini is petite, elegant in black, with a purple scarf around her shoulders, her white hair swept back from her forehead. A Nobel laureate, honoured for her work on nerve growth factor, she chaired a round table of eminent women scientists as they discussed prejudice and sexism. She must know all there is to know about these topics.
Nobel sub-group
She is a member of an exclusive group of several hundred Nobel laureates in science. But, as a woman laureate in science, she is a member of an even more exclusive sub-group with only 11 members. As Dr Hilary Rose, professor emerita of social policy at the University of Bradford remarked as she introduced Montalcini, "the problem is the men, not the women. It's a system whereby men give each other prizes."
Rita Levi-Montalcini and her twin sister Paola were born in Turin on April 22nd, 1909. In her autobiographical website she describes her parents: "Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician, and Adele Motalcini, a talented painter and exquisite human being." The four children 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."
Her father loved his children and had a great respect for women, she writes, but he believed that a professional career would interfere with the duties of a wife and mother. He decided that the three girls - Anna, Paola and Rita - would not enroll in university.
Her older brother Gino became "of the most well-known Italian architects and a professor at the University of Turin". Rita's twin sister, Paola, became "one of the most outstanding women painters in Italy and is still in full activity." Her father's decision did not prevent her full-time dedication to painting.
Medical school
"I had a more difficult time." At 20, Rita realised that she could not conform to the feminine role assigned to her by her father and asked his permission to engage on a professional career. In eight months, she filled the gaps in her knowledge of Latin, Greek and maths, graduated from high school and entered medical school in Turin. Two of her university colleagues and close friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, were to receive the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, 17 and 11 years before she was to do so. All three were students of the famous Italian histologist Giuseppe Levi.
In 1936, she graduated from medical school and began to specialise in neurology and psychiatry. That same year Mussolini issued the "Manifesto per la Difesa della Razza" and laws were soon promulgated barring academic and professional careers to non-Aryan Italian citizens.
Rita Levi-Montalcini spent a short time in Belgium but returned to Italy to be with her family. In Turin, she built a small research lab in her bedroom but heavy bombing forced a move to a country cottage where she again rebuilt her lab. It was these experiments, repeated later in the US, that earned her the Nobel Prize in 1986.
The invasion of Italy by the Germans in 1943 forced a further move, this time to Florence, where she lived underground until the end of the war. "I worked in Italy after the victory. I was working as a doctor and that was a terrible time. There were many different epidemics, " she told the 400 delegates at the conference.
In 1947, Professor Viktor Hamburger invited Rita Levi-Montalcini to Washington to repeat the experiments that she had performed many years earlier. "I had intended to stay three months, but I stayed there for 30 years," she said wryly. She now has both Italian and American citizenship.
"Still working"
Made an associate professor in 1956 and a full professor in 1957, she "retired" in 1977. In 1986, she shared the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine with the American biochemist Stanley Cohen for their respective discoveries of nerve growth factor and epidermal growth factor. "I'm still working in science. I continue to work as hard as when I was a young woman, probably even harder . . . I'm also very interested in feminine questions." She is professorial collaborator at the National Institute of Neurobiology and president of the Institute of Italian Encyclopaedia and she is active in women's and children's rights.
"Most of the people I work with are women. They are extremely intelligent and highly dedicated. I think you can only have a good future for humanity if women are allowed to use their intellectual and social capacities. You can't separate one from the other . . . I have great hope and confidence in women's capabilities."