On This Day in History: December 10

Dr Rita Levi-Montalcini wins a Nobel Prize

Subscribers can listen to the audio of today’s post here.

How many potential Nobel Prize winners did the fucking Nazis murder? Not this one, at least. Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, Italy, in 1909, and during World War II she was forced into hiding to avoid extermination. Four decades after the war ended, she won a Nobel for her work in neurobiology.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: December 10, 1986--

Whether on the far left or far right of the political spectrum, there are myriad examples of anti-intellectualism. Modern embracers of communism who love to invade my social media conveniently forget the mass murder of scientists, academics, artists, and teachers in places like the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, China, and North Korea simply for the crime of being smart.

Rita Levi-Montalcini was smart, but also Jewish, which fucking Nazis could not abide. She graduated summa cum laude with an M.D in 1936, but in 1938 she lost her position at the University of Turin because Mussolini was as much of a fucking Nazi as any Hitler-loving German. During the war she and her family fled to Florence, Italy where they were hidden by non-Jewish friends. While in hiding, she set up a small laboratory in the tiny, shared living space to study the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. Now I want scrambled eggs. Continues below …

Don’t be chicken. This is another scramble for paying subscribes. Click the button.

Florence was liberated in 1944 and Rita volunteered as a physician to help in the Allied war efforts to end the fucking Nazi reign of terror. Afterward, she returned to her studies, the work on chicken embryos being the foundation of her research for the next several decades. After the war her efforts gained the attention of the head of the zoology department at Washington University in St. Louis. She was offered a position as a research assistant and accepted, planning to stay for only a year. She stayed for 30, achieving the rank of full professor in 1958.

In 1956 her and colleague Stanley Cohen, a biochemist, isolated nerve growth factor. I’d ask my physician wife the fuck nerve growth factor is but she’s in a meeting so google it is. Science Direct, referencing a 1980 book Biochemistry of the Brain, says it is “an insulin-like protein, which regulates growth, development and maintenance of sympathetic and embryonic sensory neurons.” Apparently, it generates cell growth when nerve tissues are stimulated, or something. I’m just gonna stop there and let you google the rest if you’re curious. Whatever it is, it’s important. And Nobel worthy. Three decades after their discovery, on December 10, 1986, Rita Levi-Montalcini and Stanley Cohen shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of NGF.

The Nobel was far from the only accolade Dr. Levi-Montalcini was awarded. She eventually returned to Italy and was nominated senator for life by the Italian president. She dedicated her life to her work, saying she didn’t regret not marrying or having children. She died in Rome in 2012 at the age of 103.

Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down