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PrintApril 23, 2009
Happy 100th Birthday Rita Levi Montalcini,
What do you do when you're officially declared inferior and thus prohibited from working?
If you're Rita Levi Montalcini, a biomedical researcher, you ignore the official(s) who, by this decree prove they are inferior and then you continue working, even if it means your exile - or worse.
If you're Rita Levi Montalcini, a biomedical researcher, you ignore the official(s) who, by this decree prove they are inferior and then you continue working, even if it means your exile - or worse.
An Italian Jew, Montalcini was in her 20s when Mussolini and his Fascists imposed anti-Jewish laws on Italy. Undaunted, she continued her research in her bedroom until she was able to escape to the U.S. where she continued her research under obviously more favorable conditions. Fifty years later that research led to the Nobel Prize for Medicine for her discoveries on mechanisms that regulate growth in organs and cells.
Mussolini? He led Italy, a proud tolerant country, into a destructive war that they lost, and was eventually publicly hung.
Montalcini? In addition to winning the Nobel, she continued her research and is celebrating her 100th birthday this week. Her mind is still sharp. Quoted in this JTA wire report, she says, "At 100 I have a mind that is superior, thanks to experience, than when I was 20," she said."
She still does some research and has this to say about Mussolini.
I should 'thank' Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race," she said. "This led me to the joy of working, not anymore unfortunately, not in university institutes but secretly in a lab set up in my bedroom."
As the Jewish expression has it - "To 120."
