During World War II,
Levi-Montalcini conducted experiments from a home laboratory, studying the
growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos which laid the groundwork for much of
her later research. (She describes this experience decades later in the 1995 science
documentary Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times,[7] which also
features her identical twin sister Paola, who had entered a decades-long career
in the arts.) Her first genetics laboratory was in her bedroom at her home. In
1943, her family fled south toFlorence, and she set up a laboratory there also.
Her family returned to Turin
in 1945.
In September 1946,
Levi-Montalcini accepted an invitation to Washington
University in St. Louis, under the supervision of Professor
Viktor Hamburger. Although the initial invitation was for one semester, she
stayed for thirty years. It was there that she did her most important work:
isolating the nerve growth factor (NGF) from observations of certain cancerous
tissues that cause extremely rapid growth of nerve cells in 1952. She was made
a Full Professor in 1958, and in 1962, established a research unit in Rome, dividing the rest of her time between there and St. Louis.
From 1961 to 1969 she directed
the Research Center of Neurobiology of the CNR (Rome), and from 1969 to 1978 the Laboratory
of Cellular Biology.
Rita Levi-Montalcini founded the
European Brain Research Institute, covering the appointment of president. Her
role in this institute was at the center of some criticism from some parts of
the scientific community in 2010.[8]
