Barred from her university by fascist racial laws, she built a lab in her bedroom — and went on to discover nerve growth factor and win the Nobel Prize.
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Rita Levi-Montalcini
The Editors
May 15, 2026
2 min read
In plain English
Rita Levi-Montalcini was an Italian scientist who, during the Second World War, secretly studied chick embryos in her bedroom. She later discovered nerve growth factor, a molecule that keeps certain neurons alive and helps them grow. She won the Nobel Prize in 1986 and lived to 103.
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Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) was born in Turin to a Jewish family. Against her father's wishes, she studied medicine, graduating in 1936. Two years later Mussolini's racial laws barred Jews from academic and professional careers.
A laboratory in the bedroom
Rather than stop, she built a small laboratory in her bedroom, sharpening sewing needles into scalpels and using fertilised chicken eggs to study how nerves grow into developing limbs. Inspired by the work of the embryologist Viktor Hamburger, she found that many nerve cells die during normal development. After the war Hamburger invited her to Washington University in St. Louis.
Nerve growth factor
In St. Louis she found that a mouse tumour transplanted into chick embryos caused nearby sensory and sympathetic nerves to sprout wildly — as if the tumour released something that fed them. With the biochemist Stanley Cohen she isolated the substance in the 1950s: nerve growth factor (NGF), the first known growth factor. Cohen later discovered epidermal growth factor. The pair shared the 1986 Nobel Prize.
Why NGF matters
NGF revealed a basic rule of development: many neurons depend on chemical signals from their targets to survive, and those that don't get enough die. A family of related molecules, the neurotrophins — including BDNF, which is boosted by exercise — shape development, learning and recovery from injury.
She was appointed a senator for life in Italy in 2001 and worked into her final years.
Everyday examples & things to try
Analogy
Neurons that need feeding
Imagine growing seedlings that only survive if their roots find a patch of fertiliser. Too few patches, and many seedlings wilt. Developing neurons are similar — they compete for limited growth factors from their targets, and the losers die. That's how the body matches the number of nerves to the tissue they serve.
Key takeaways
- Barred by racial laws, Levi-Montalcini did research in a home lab during WWII.
- With Stanley Cohen she discovered nerve growth factor (NGF), the first growth factor.
- Neurotrophins such as NGF and BDNF help neurons survive, grow and change.
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