Nobel prize winner visits Technion

The world's oldest living Nobel prize winner, Italy's Prof. Rita Levi-Montalcini, visited the Technion recently.

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY (TRANSLATED)
The world's oldest living Nobel prize winner, Italy's Prof. Rita Levi-Montalcini, visited the Technion recently for a glittering ceremony attended by the country's top scientists, reports Yediot Haifa. Levi-Montalcini, who will be 99 years old in April, was born to a Jewish family from Turin and began studying medicine, but found her academic career cut short under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's anti-Jewish laws in the 1930s and 1940s. She resumed her career after the war and specialized in neurology. In 1986, she and colleague Stanley Cohen won the Nobel prize for medicine for their joint discovery of growth factors, proteins that stimulate cell growth. In 2001, she was named a senator-for-life in the Italian senate in honor of her work. She has also been honored by many academic institutions, among them the Technion.