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Levi-Montalcini
[ lee-vee-mon-tl-chee-nee, ley-; Italian le-vee-mawn-tahl-chee-nee ]
noun
- Rita, 1909–2012, U.S. neurologist, born in Italy: Nobel Prize 1986.
Levi-Montalcini
- Italian-born American developmental biologist who discovered the nerve growth factor (NGF), a bodily substance that stimulates the growth of nerve cells. For this work she shared with American biochemist Stanley Cohen the 1986 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.
Example Sentences
He and Levi-Montalcini, who was denied opportunities to teach and practice medicine in her native Italy because of her Jewish heritage, formed an innovative scientific partnership.
His colleague at the time, Rita Levi-Montalcini, had made a seminal discovery of a protein known as nerve growth factor, which stimulated the growth of nerve cells in laboratory mice.
The importance of Dr. Cohen’s and Levi-Montalcini’s research was not fully understood at first.
Dr. Cohen and Levi-Montalcini, who died in 2012, shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
For her early work in Italy, Levi-Montalcini built a small laboratory in her family home and worked in secret because of Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto of Race, which barred non-Aryan citizens from having academic careers.
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