She won the Nobel Prize at the age of 102

"I don't care about death. The most important thing is the message you leave behind. It's immortality," the Nobel Prize-winning woman said in her 102-year-old birthday.

Mrs. Rita Levi-Montalcini is the oldest Nobel Prize-winning scientist today (photo: Discovery)

Mrs. Rita Levi-Montalcini has just celebrated her 102nd birthday. This is the leading researcher on the nervous system and the fourth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Psychology and Medicine in 1986 by discovering a neuronal growth factor (with American colleague Stanley Cohen) .

Since then Le-Montalcini has been pursuing his findings in the European Institute of Brain Research, founded in 2005 by herself at the age of 96.

Her research has important implications for studying many diseases, especially cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Le Montalcini was born in 1909 with her twin sister Paola in a Jewish family in Turin (Italy). Her father insisted that women's responsibility was only to be a wife and mother, but she still attended medical school and graduated in 1936.

However, her career was interrupted by Mussolini's 1938 law banning people from lower classes from learning and developing their careers.

Undeterred, she set up a laboratory in her bedroom during World War II and studied the development of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. After fleeing with his family to Florence (Italy) in 1943, Levi-Montalcini worked as a doctor and nurse, treating the refugees with infectious diseases.

After the war, she accepted an invitation to study at Washington University in St. Louis. She has been here for three decades to continue her research and neurodevelopmental factors.

Levi - Mantalcini is director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Research Council in Rome from 1968 - 1978. She also taught at Washington University until 1977 and was appointed professor. After 1978, Levi - Mantacini continued to study at the Rome Institute, receiving numerous awards and recognition from institutes around the world.

Speaking at an interview on the birthday, Levi-Montalcini said: "I don't care about death. The most important thing is the message you leave. It's immortality."