Rita Levi-Montalcini, MD, neurologist and Nobel Laureate, died on December 30, 2012 at her home in Rome, Italy. She was 103. Along with her colleague, Stanley Cohen, PhD, Dr. Levi-Montalcini earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986, “for their discoveries of growth factors”.
Dr. Levi-Montalcini earned her MD summa cum laude from the University of Turin Medical School in 1936 and completed a degree for specialization in neurology and psychiatry in 1940. An Italian Jew, Dr. Levi-Montalcini was prevented from practicing medicine or working in a university due to the Fascist laws of the time. As such, she set up a laboratory in her bedroom to continue research on neurogenesis, studying the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. In 1941, her family was forced to leave Turin because of Allied bombing, and she reestablished her laboratory in the family’s cottage in the countryside. From 1943 until the end of the war, the family lived underground in Florence, where Dr. Levi-Montalcini then worked as a physician in an Italian refugee camp. After the war, she returned to Turin and resumed her post as an assistant at the University of Turin Institute of Anatomy.
In 1947, Dr. Levi-Montalcini accepted an invitation to join Dr. Viktor Hamburger, head of the Zoology Department (later incorporated into the Biology Department) of Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), as a research associate. She remained at WUSTL for three decades, spending time in both St. Louis and in Italy. She established a collaborative laboratory with WUSTL at the Higher Institute of Health in Rome as well as the Laboratory of Cell Biology of the Italian National Research Council in Rome. She served as the inaugural director of the latter. She retired as professor emeritus of Biology from WUSTL in 1977 and served as a guest lecturer in both the United States and Italy thereafter.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Dr. Levi-Montalcini received numerous honors and awards, including: the Max Weinstein Award of the United Cerebral Palsy Association; the International Feltrinelli Medical Award of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome; the William Thomson Wakeman Award of the National Paraplegia Foundation; the Lewis S. Rosentiel Award for Distinguished work in Basic Medical Research of Brandeis University; the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University; the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, and the National Medal of Science. She was the first female recipient of the Max Weinstein Award and the first woman to be installed in the Pontifical Scientific Academy. She was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences in Italy. She was honored with appointment as a senator for life in 2001 by then President of the Italian Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Dr. Levi-Montalcini published many research articles and manuscripts as well as her autobiography, In Praise of Imperfection: My Life and Work.
Elwood Jensen
Elwood Jensen, PhD, renowned researcher who discovered estrogen receptors, died on December 16, 2012 at age 92. Dr. Jensen’s pioneering innovations permitted the synthesis of high specific activity radioactive ligands for the estrogen receptor and were critical for studies to detect and characterize the estrogen receptor. The application of these methods also led to identification and characterization of the other steroid hormone receptors. His work, for which he was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine, changed the course of cancer research.
Dr. Jensen earned his PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Chicago. He subsequently served as a Guggenheim Fellow at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where he first became interested in the study of steroid hormones. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1947, where he conducted his pioneering research, and remained there until his retirement in 1990. An original member of the Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research, Dr. Jensen served as its director from 1969 until 1982.
After retirement from the University of Chicago, Dr. Jensen served as a distinguished professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in the Department of Cancer and Cell Biology. He was also scholar-in-residence at Cornell Medical College, Alexander von Humboldt visiting professor at the University of Hamburg, and Nobel Visiting Professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Dr. Jensen was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a co-recipient of the 2004 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. He earned numerous other prestigious awards and was recognized with honorary degrees from Wittenberg University, Acadia University, the Medical College of Ohio, the University of Hamburg, and the University of Athens.
William J. Weiner
William J. Weiner, MD, professor and chairman of the department of neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, died on December 29, 2012 of multiple myeloma at age 67. Dr. Weiner was widely recognized for his work with Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Tourette’s syndrome, dystonic tremor, tardive dyskinesia, and other movement disorders. He published extensively and was co-author of the textbooks, Movement Disorders — A Comprehensive Survey and Neurology for the Non-Neurologist.
Dr. Weiner earned his MD at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. He completed internship at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center and first-year residency in neurology at the University of Minnesota. He subsequently returned to Rush-Presbyterian to complete two additional years of residency. He was chief of the neurology service at the Memphis Naval Hospital in Millington, TN from 1973 until 1975, when he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.
In 1983, Dr. Weiner joined the University of Miami School of Medicine as a professor in the department of neurology. He served there for seven years before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s neurology department. Dr. Weiner had served as professor and chair of the department of neurology at Maryland since 2001, and had recently learned that the in-patient neurological service center at the school is being named in his honor.