Jewish Lives: Rita Levi-Montalcini

Rita speaks to adolescents in schools throughout Italy, urging them to face life with optimism and faith in people, and quoting Ann Frank's farewell words on the eve of the discovery of the Frank hiding place by the Nazis: "I think that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquillity will return again. In the meantime I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out." It came for Rita.

Dr. Shirley Tilghman, professor of molecular biology at Princeton, writes: "The culture of science evolved in a period when it was being practiced exclusively by men, and that has greatly influenced the outcome. It is a men's game, and it continues to be played by men's rules. Linda Wilson, president of Radcliffe and a chemist, recently suggested that the fierce rivalries and ruthless competition among scientists was incompatible with the inclusion of women and minorities in science.[ldot] But science is an extraordinary profession. I know of few other professions where the excitement that brought you to the field in the first place is sustained over so many years. It would be a tragedy to exclude women from all this fun." [38] And indeed, for Rita Levi-Montalcini, science is pure joy, as much at eighty-five as at twenty.

On April 22, 1999 Rita had her ninetieth birthday, and also celebrated the publication of her new book Ninety Years in the Galaxy of the Mind, in which, continuing her studies of the brain, she devises a system of ethics for the new generations.

Milan is only one of the cities in Italy which celebrated both her birthday and new book. The Milanese newspaper, Corriere della Sera, carried an informative article, which was translated by Scottish-born Joan Rundo, a Milanese bilingual translator:

The walls of Milan are plastered with huge posters showing her diaphanous and determined face. They announce the celebrations that are to be held in the city for a really special birthday, her ninetieth. Rita Levi Montalcini, Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine in 1986, was born in Turin on April 22, 1909, but Milan will be celebrating the birthday in advance, tomorrow and Saturday. Honours and events appear under the aegis of the association "Ten Nobels for the Future," which each year organizes meetings or projects on science, economics, ethics. This seventh edition is the first one to celebrate a birthday, and the first to

give a present For Rita the present is the exhibition of an artist very dear to her, her twin sister Paola. And the picture that Rita wanted on the cover of her new book, La Galassia Mente, which comes out on April 20, is by Paola, as was her previous book L'Asso Nella Manica a Brandelli, a best-seller, a work on the potential of the brain.

Rita Levi Montalcini's objective is not to disseminate pure scientific knowledge. Along with the explanations of how neurons and dendrites function,-and, in the case of this book, how inorganic matter developed into organic matter, and how the nervous system was born, up to the development of the human brain--there is a message which is essentially one of values, ethics. The chapters, as complex and fascinating as they are clear, describe the evolutionary process of millions of years, aims, and arrives at, the Cogito, Ergo Sum of Descartes, and "man is only a reed, but a thinking reed" of Pascal. The still mysterious coupling of the brain and the mind is explained to lay readers with the sole objective of reaching the heart of man and woman, illustrating their capacities of awareness and, therefore, of free will and responsibility.