Must Know
Born in Turin, Italy, she was the first woman to head the National Academy of Sciences of Italy and was a champion of science education for women worldwide. She began studying medicine in 1930, graduating summa cum laude. She opened a laboratory in her home, where she did research on the growth of nerve cells. During World War II, Levi-Montalcini fled from the Nazis and moved to Florence. After the war, she immigrated to the United States and began working in a laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, where she discovered the nerve growth factor. In 1962, she helped establish the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986.
