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Portrait of Rita Levi-Montalcini
Photo: Kurt Hagblom, Firma Hagblom-Foto, restored by Adam Cuerden, University Library, Lund UniversityURL: https://www.alvin-portal.org/alvin/imageViewer.jsf?dsId=ATTACHMENT-0001&pid=alvin-record%3A240038&dswid=5683 · Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine · 1986

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Barred from her university by Fascist race laws, she kept working in her bedroom and went on to discover the first growth factor.

The Nobel citation: “for their discoveries of growth factors”
Born
April 22, 1909, Turin, Italy
Died
December 30, 2012, Rome, Italy
Shared with
Stanley Cohen
Affiliation at the time
Institute of Cell Biology of the C.N.R., Italy

Medicine prize

1986

Shared with 1 other laureate.

Age that year

77years

Born in 1909.

Sources cited

25

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • After Fascist race laws pushed her out of her university post in 1938, she built a lab in her bedroom, using sewing needles as scalpels and a watchmaker's forceps.
  • In 1952 she flew to Rio de Janeiro with two tumour-bearing mice in her handbag. There, nerve tissue grown near the tumour sprouted a halo of fibres within a day.
  • Nerve growth factor was the first growth factor discovered. The Nobel Assembly said every group that later found a new one followed in her and Cohen's tracks.
  • At 97, as a senator for life, she held a deciding vote and threatened to withdraw her support until the government reversed a cut to science funding.
  • She started a new research project at 98 and published it in PNAS in January 2012, at 102. She died that December, aged 103.

The breakthrough

Nerve growth factor, the first growth factor to be discovered (1952)

In a growing embryo, nerve cells send long fibres out to muscles, skin and organs. The body makes far more nerve cells than it needs, and about half of them die. Levi-Montalcini wanted to know why. Working in her bedroom during the war, she saw that when a chick embryo lost a limb bud, the nerve cells meant to serve it grew at first and then died. She concluded that the missing tissue normally sends back something that keeps them alive. In St. Louis she repeated an experiment by Elmer Bueker, a former student of her host Viktor Hamburger, who had grafted mouse tumours onto chick embryos. Nerves near the tumours grew wildly, even into blood vessels, and the effect worked at a distance, so the tumour had to be releasing a substance. In 1952, in her friend Hertha Meyer's lab in Rio de Janeiro, she proved it in a dish: nerve tissue placed near, but not touching, a piece of tumour sprouted a dense halo of fibres within a day. Biochemist Stanley Cohen then purified the protein, first from snake venom and then from mouse salivary glands. It was named nerve growth factor (NGF). When antibodies blocked NGF in newborn mice, most of their sympathetic nerve cells disappeared, proving the body needs it. Think of NGF as a porch light: tissues switch it on to guide nerve fibres to them, and nerves that never find a light fade away.[3],[4],[6],[9],[11]

“If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize.”
Rita Levi-Montalcini, Her own reflection on how the race laws pushed her into independent research, as quoted by NobelPrize.org in its 'Women who changed science' profile.[5]

What it meant for humanity

NGF changed how scientists understand growth. Experts had long assumed that growth was steered mainly by hormones from distant glands. NGF showed that cells also send signals to their neighbours. The Nobel Assembly said every group that later found a new growth factor, such as factors acting on connective-tissue, immune and blood-vessel cells, had followed in the tracks of Levi-Montalcini and Cohen. A whole family of related nerve factors, the neurotrophins, was found from the 1980s on. Her antibody experiment, which removed one branch of the nervous system in newborn animals, gave researchers a precise new tool for studying how that system works. Later work with her colleague Luigi Aloe showed that NGF also acts on immune cells, linking the nervous and immune systems. Growth-factor research also helped explain cancer, since some cancer genes turned out to be faulty versions of growth-signal machinery. Medicine came slowly. In 1998 a team including Aloe reported that NGF eye drops healed severe corneal ulcers in all 12 patients of a small, uncontrolled study. The Italian firm Dompé later developed cenegermin, a lab-made human NGF, approved in the EU in 2017 and in the US in 2018 for neurotrophic keratitis, a rare disease in which a numb cornea breaks down and can perforate. In a key trial, about 74% of treated patients healed within 8 weeks, compared with 43% on a dummy solution. It was the first NGF medicine approved in Europe or the United States. Hopes for NGF in Alzheimer's disease and nerve damage remain unproven. Outside the lab, she co-founded a foundation that funds scholarships for young African women, served as a UN food agency ambassador against hunger, and as a senator used her vote to defend science funding.

  • The Nobel Assembly's 1986 prize announcement said that all research groups that later discovered new growth factors had followed in the tracks of Levi-Montalcini and Cohen.[4]
  • In 1960 she and her assistant Barbara Booker showed that an antiserum against NGF almost completely destroyed the developing sympathetic nervous system of newborn mice, rats, rabbits and kittens, a new way to remove one set of nerve cells.[6],[9]
  • In a small 1998 study with no control group, NGF eye drops healed severe neurotrophic corneal ulcers in all 12 patients treated.[17]
  • Cenegermin, a lab-made human NGF, was approved in the EU in 2017 and in the US in 2018 for neurotrophic keratitis. It was the first NGF medicine approved in Europe or the United States.[16],[18]
  • With her longtime colleague Luigi Aloe she found in the 1970s that NGF also acts on immune cells called mast cells, a finding that helped launch the study of links between nerves and the immune system.[23],[24]
  • In 1992 she and her twin sister Paola set up a foundation that gives scholarships to young African women. In 1999 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization named her one of its first ambassadors against hunger.[6],[8]

Impact in numbers

Levi-Montalcini's main gift was an idea: that cells keep one another alive and guide one another's growth with chemical signals. NGF was the first growth factor found, and it opened the field of growth factors, which now runs through neuroscience, immunology and cancer biology. We make no numerical claim for her. The NGF medicine approved in Europe and the US, cenegermin eye drops, treats a rare eye disease, and we found no published count of patients treated. Drugs that block NGF to ease pain stalled over safety problems. Most of her influence flows through other scientists who built on NGF, and it cannot honestly be turned into a count of lives saved. Her life adds a second kind of impact. Expelled by race laws, she kept doing science in a bedroom. In old age she used her fame to fund education for young African women and to defend science funding in the Italian Senate.

Fundamental scienceHealthEducationWomen's rights

No number is given here on purpose. Some contributions cannot be counted honestly, and we would rather describe them than invent a figure.

The double edge

No direct harm has been traced to Levi-Montalcini's discovery, but three issues deserve mention. The first is her close ties to the drug company Fidia. In 1994, during Italy's drug-approval bribery scandal, a jailed health-ministry official claimed Fidia had spent 14 billion lire to buy her Nobel Prize. She, Fidia's former chief and the Nobel Assembly all rejected the claim, and Italy's leaders rallied to her defence. A former Fidia executive did describe close links: Fidia's chief arranged funding for a foundation bearing her family name and later made her head of his new company's scientific committee. Fidia's leading drug, Cronassial, a mix of gangliosides from cow brains, was withdrawn in Italy in December 1993 after reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a paralysing nerve disorder, although a causal link has not been proven. Second, drugs that block NGF to ease arthritis pain caused joint damage in large trials, and by 2024 they had fallen out of favour. Third, eye pain is the most commonly reported side effect of cenegermin eye drops.

  • Moderate

    Ties to Fidia and a rejected Nobel 'bribe' claim

    In 1994 a health official jailed in a bribery scandal claimed the drug firm Fidia had bought her Nobel Prize. She, the firm's ex-chief and the Nobel Assembly rejected it. A former Fidia executive told magistrates that Fidia's chief had arranged half the capital of the 'Levi Foundation'. Fidia's leading drug, the cow-brain ganglioside mix Cronassial, was withdrawn in Italy in 1993 after reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome; a causal link has not been proven.[10],[12],[13],[14],[15]

  • Moderate

    Anti-NGF painkillers damaged joints

    Because NGF drives pain, companies tested antibodies that block it for arthritis. In pooled phase 3 trials of tanezumab, 3.2% to 6.2% of patients on the drug had joint-damage events confirmed by an expert panel, including rapidly worsening osteoarthritis, against 1.5% on standard painkillers. By 2024 such drugs had fallen out of favour.[9],[16],[19]

  • Minor

    Side effects of NGF eye drops

    In US post-marketing reports for cenegermin, eye pain and irritation were the most common complaints. Users were no more likely than users of other eye drops to report problems outside the eye.[20]

Against the odds

Italy's Jews were a small, ancient and well-integrated community of about 50,000 people in 1933, and until 1938 they could even join the Fascist Party. That year Mussolini's government passed race laws that pushed Jews out of schools, universities, government jobs and the professions. Levi-Montalcini, then a young neurology assistant in Turin, was suspended from her post in October 1938. The same law immediately expelled 9 professors and 15 aides and assistants at her university alone. Her mentor Giuseppe Levi was also expelled, and Jewish scientists could no longer publish in Italian journals. She went to Brussels to keep working, then came home as a German invasion of Belgium loomed. Her family chose to stay rather than emigrate to the United States, and she built a secret lab in her bedroom. Allied bombing then drove the family to the countryside. When Germany occupied northern Italy in 1943 and began rounding up Jews, they fled to Florence and lived under false names until the city was liberated in 1944. The Germans deported 8,564 Jews from Italy and Italian-held territories, most to Auschwitz; 1,009 came back. Before all this, she had first had to overcome her own father, who believed a professional career would clash with a woman's duties as wife and mother.

  • 1938

    Dismissal

    Under Mussolini's race laws she was suspended from her post as a volunteer assistant at Turin's clinic for nervous and mental diseases by a rector's decree of 18 October 1938.[2],[6]

  • —

    Censorship

    As Jewish researchers, she and Giuseppe Levi could not publish in Italian journals, so the results of their home experiments appeared in foreign journals in the early 1940s.[5]

  • 1939

    Exile

    Barred from work at home, she went to Brussels in 1939 as a guest of a neurological institute, then returned to Turin as a German invasion of Belgium loomed.[2],[6],[7]

  • —

    War

    Heavy Allied bombing of Turin forced her family out of the city. She rebuilt her makeshift lab in a country cottage and kept experimenting.[2],[7]

  • 1943

    Holocaust survivor

    After Germany occupied northern Italy in September 1943 and began rounding up Jews, she fled with her family to Florence and lived in hiding under a false name until the city was liberated.[5],[6],[7],[21]

  • 1944

    War

    After the liberation of Florence she worked as a doctor and nurse in an Allied camp for war refugees, where epidemics of infectious disease and typhoid were killing people.[2]

  • —

    Other

    Her father believed a professional career would interfere with a woman's duties as wife and mother and did not want his daughters at university. At 20 she asked his permission, then crammed Latin, Greek and mathematics in eight months to enter medical school.[2],[5]

Jewish background

Both parents JewishIdentified as Jewish, secular

Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin to Jewish parents: Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a painter. Italy's national biographical dictionary describes the family as Sephardic, and NobelPrize.org calls it wealthy. The 1938 race laws classed her as Jewish and ended her university post, and the family survived the German occupation in hiding under false names. She was not religious. At her 2013 funeral in Turin, speakers for Italy's Jewish communities called her agnostic but deeply and proudly Jewish, and her ashes went to the family tomb in the Jewish section of the city's cemetery.[1],[2],[5],[6],[7],[25]

Key dates

  1. April 22, 1909

    Born in Turin with her twin sister Paola, the youngest of four children of engineer Adamo Levi and painter Adele Montalcini, in a Sephardic Jewish family.[1],[2],[6]

  2. 1936

    Graduates in medicine and surgery with top honours from the University of Turin, where she trained under the histologist Giuseppe Levi.[2],[6]

  3. October 18, 1938

    Suspended from her university post under Mussolini's race laws, which barred Jews from academic and professional careers.[2],[6]

  4. 1940

    After a spell in Brussels, returns to Turin and builds a lab in her bedroom to study nerve growth in chick embryos.[2],[6],[22]

  5. 1943

    After Germany occupies northern Italy, flees with her family to Florence and lives in hiding under a false name.[2],[6]

  6. 1944

    After Florence is liberated, works as a doctor for the Allies in a camp for war refugees.[2]

  7. September 1947

    Joins Viktor Hamburger at Washington University in St. Louis for what was meant to be a short stay. She remains there for decades.[2],[6],[8]

  8. 1952

    In Rio de Janeiro, shows that mouse tumour tissue releases a substance that makes nerve fibres sprout in a dish: nerve growth factor.[3],[4],[6]

  9. 1953

    Biochemist Stanley Cohen joins the St. Louis team and goes on to purify NGF from snake venom and mouse salivary glands.[4],[6]

  10. 1960

    With Barbara Booker, shows that antibodies against NGF destroy the developing sympathetic nervous system in newborn mammals.[9]

  11. 1962

    Sets up a research unit in Rome and divides her time between Rome and St. Louis. From 1969 to 1978 she directs the CNR's Institute of Cell Biology.[2]

  12. December 10, 1986

    Receives half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Stanley Cohen, 'for their discoveries of growth factors'.[1],[6]

  13. 2001

    Named a senator for life by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.[6]

  14. December 30, 2012

    Dies at home in Rome, aged 103.[1],[6]

Sources

  1. 1.Rita Levi-Montalcini - Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
  2. 2.Rita Levi-Montalcini - Biographical · NobelPrize.org (from Les Prix Nobel 1986, Nobel Foundation, 1987), 1987
  3. 3.The Nerve Growth Factor: Thirty-Five Years Later (Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1986) · NobelPrize.org, 1986
  4. 4.The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1986 - Press release · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute), 1986
  5. 5.Rita Levi-Montalcini (Women who changed science) · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
  6. 6.Levi-Montalcini, Rita (Strata P), Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani · Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, 2013
  7. 7.Rita Levi-Montalcini (Nidam-Orvieto I), Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women · Jewish Women's Archive, 2009
  8. 8.Rita Levi-Montalcini (b. 1909), Missouri Women in the Health Sciences · Bernard Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine, 2004
  9. 9.Rita Levi-Montalcini: Neuroscientist par excellence (Iversen LL; PNAS 110(13):4862-4863) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (via PubMed Central), 2013
  10. 10.Rita Levi-Montalcini obituary (Tucker A) · The Guardian, 2012
  11. 11.Speed read: Neighbourhood growth scheme (Pietzsch J) · NobelPrize.org, 2009
  12. 12.Italians rally to condemn Nobel 'bribe' allegation (Clough P, Savill A) · The Independent, 1994
  13. 13.'Nobel comprato? Non ne so nulla' (22 February 1994) · la Repubblica (archive), 1994
  14. 14.Is there a decrease in Guillain-Barre syndrome incidence after bovine ganglioside withdrawal in Italy? (Govoni V et al., J Neurol Sci 216:99-103) · Journal of the Neurological Sciences (PubMed record), 2003
  15. 15.cronassial [Supplementary Concept]: mixture of gangliosides extracted and purified from bovine brain cortex · U.S. National Library of Medicine, MeSH
  16. 16.The History of Nerve Growth Factor: From Molecule to Drug (Gavioli E et al., Biomolecules 14(6):635) · Biomolecules (via PubMed Central), 2024
  17. 17.Topical treatment with nerve growth factor for corneal neurotrophic ulcers (Lambiase A et al., N Engl J Med 338:1174-1180) · New England Journal of Medicine (PubMed record), 1998
  18. 18.Oxervate (cenegermin): EPAR medicine overview · European Medicines Agency, 2017
  19. 19.Characterization of adverse joint outcomes in patients with osteoarthritis treated with subcutaneous tanezumab (Carrino JA et al., Osteoarthritis Cartilage 31:1612-1626) · Osteoarthritis and Cartilage (PubMed record), 2023
  20. 20.Real-World Safety Profile of Cenegermin Per FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (Choudhry HS et al., J Ocul Pharmacol Ther 41:339-346) · Journal of Ocular Pharmacology and Therapeutics (PubMed record), 2025
  21. 21.Italy (Holocaust Encyclopedia) · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  22. 22.Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012) (Navis AR), Embryo Project Encyclopedia · Arizona State University, 2007
  23. 23.The multiple life of nerve growth factor: tribute to Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012) (Aloe L, Chaldakov GN; Balkan Med J 30(1):4-7) · Balkan Medical Journal (via PubMed Central), 2013
  24. 24.Rita Levi-Montalcini - Banquet speech, 10 December 1986 · NobelPrize.org, 1986
  25. 25.L'ultimo saluto a Rita Levi Montalcini (2 January 2013) · Il Secolo XIX (archived by the Internet Archive), 2013

Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 12 corrections made. How we check

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