Dedication & devotion - Italy's brain scientist & Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini wants to forget turning 100

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*update* 2013
On 22 April 2009, she became the first Nobel laureate ever to reach the age of 100 - at the time of her death, she was the longest lived Nobel laureate

This astonishing woman - who studied medicine, survived Fascism and prejudice, and went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1986, who still takes an active part in politics in the Senate, is planning another book and campaigning for the rights of women in Africa.

In her autobiography she writes that she and her twin sister Paola (an artist who died in 2000 and whose artworks decorate her office walls) were born to Adamo Levi, “an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician”, and Adele Montalcini, “a talented painter and an exquisite human being”. There were two older siblings, Gino and Anna, also both now dead. “The four of us enjoyed a most wonderful family atmosphere,” she writes, “filled with love and reciprocal devotion. Both parents were highly cultured and instilled in us their high appreciation of intellectual pursuit. Her father “was a person of great intellectual and moral value, but he was a Victorian. As a child, I saw him as a person who dominated everything I did.”

It was because she felt that her mother was also “dominated” that Levi-Montalcini never married. “I decided I would never marry and I kept my word. I did not want to be ‘in second place' like my mother, whom I adored. I told my father I did not intend to be just a wife and mother. I didn't know I wanted to be a scientist then, I didn't know what science was, but I wanted to dedicate my life to helping others.

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Photos courtesy of Franco Origlia / Getty Images and machiavelli.free.fr, gallery.unita.it, and timesonline.co.uk

Original Source: Times Online