Rita Levi-Montalcini Built Bedroom Lab

In 1938, Italian neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini lost her position at the University of Turin after Mussolini’s racial laws barred Jews from academic careers. Instead of stopping her research, she set up a laboratory in her bedroom in Turin and studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. That work helped lead to her discovery of nerve growth factor, and in 1986, she won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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