Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a 70-year-old Italian Jewish biologist, received the Saint Vincent Prize for Medicine, generally considered second in worldwide prestige after the Nobel Prize for which she is also a candidate.
She discovered a protein called the NGF (nerve growth factor) which provokes the growth and differentiation of nerve cells, considered of primary importance for cancer research along with the discovery she co-authored, in 1960, of an antibody that irreversibly destroys the neurons of the sympathetic nervous system.
Levi-Montalcini directs the laboratory of cellular biology of the National Council for Research in Rome, Italy’s most important research center, has a Chair in Neurobiology at Washington University in St. Louis and is a member of several academies.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
