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Rita Levi-Montalcini (b. 1909)

Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini was born into an intellectual, though traditional, family in Turin, Italy in 1909.

Her father believed that a career would interfere with a woman’s role as wife and mother and thus would not allow Rita, her twin sister Paolo, and older sister Anna to pursue higher education and professional careers.

At the age of twenty, realizing that she could not fulfill the feminine role envisioned by her father, Levi-Montalcini persuaded him to allow her to enter the University of Turin to study medicine.

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She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin Medical School in 1936, and then completed a degree for specialization in neurology and psychiatry in 1940. Two of her university colleagues and friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, also were to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (in 1969 and 1975 respectively).

All three were trained in biological