Rita Levi Montalcini

Rita Levi Montalcini

Text from:

Goodnight stories for Rebel Girls

and

https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/rita-levi-montalcini

Rita Levi Montalcini è una scienziata.

Multiple Choice

How do we say "is" in italiano?

• è

• sono

• Ciao

Rita Levi-Montalcini began her scientific career in danger, as a Jew in Italia Fascista. She ended it in triumph, as the neuroembryologist who co-discovered nerve growth factor, a prominent figure in Italian politics, and an active researcher and mentor until her death at the age of 103.

Born in Torino, Italia, in 1909, Rita Levi-Montalcini was raised by an authoritarian father who strongly disapproved of women’s education beyond finishing school.

Uomo / Donna

Multiple Choice

How do we say "man" in italiano?

• Uomo

• Donna

Multiple Choice

How do we say "woman" in italiano?

• Uomo

• Donna

When Rita's nanny died of cancer, she decided to become a doctor.

She was particularly fascinated by neurons (the stuff our brain is made of)

Multiple Choice

Neurons are

• cells which is part of the nervous system. Neurons send messages to and from the brain.

• the organs inside your head that control your body's activities and enable you to think and to feel things such as heat and pain.

"At 20, I realised that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career."

She convinced him to let her study medicine. Woefully undereducated to that point, she crammed years’ worth of Greek, Latin and mathematics into eight months, and then entered medical school at the Università di Torino.

So after graduation, Rita worked with an extraordinary professor named Giuseppe Levi (that would have mentored two other Nobel laureates) and with a group of outstanding fellow scientists from her class.

Open Ended

Do you know what the Nobel prize is?

The Nobel Prize is one of the most important awards that anyone can receive. Nobel Prizes are given each year in six subject areas. The areas are physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics. The prizes honor people anywhere in the world who have done outstanding work in one of these areas.

They were in the middle of some very important research when a cruel dictator passed a law saying that Jewish people were not allowed to work at the university.

That dictator was Mussolini and he was a friend and ally of...

She escaped to Belgium with her professor, who was also Jewish. But when the Nazis invaded Belgium she had to escape again and returned in Italia.

É difficile

It's hard to work as a scientist when you have to hide all the time and you have no access to a lab, but Rita did not give up.

She turned her bedroom into a smaller research lab. She sharpened sewing needles to create surgical instruments. She placed a small operating table in front of her bed where she dissected chickens, and studied cells under a microscope.

When her city was bombed, Rita escaped again, then again. From hideout to hideout, no matter how difficult, wherever she went, she kept on working.

For her work in the area of neurobiology, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine - which made her the third person from her medical school class to win a Nobel Prize!

She was the first Nobel laureate to reach the age of 100!

"I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately in university institutes, but in a bedroom."

Multiple Choice

How do you say "thanks" in italiano?

• Grazie

• Prego

• Ciao

"If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize."

Multiple Choice

Do you remember how to say "young" in italiano?

• Ciao

• Giovane

• bello