Nobel medicine laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini, a neurologist and developmental biologist, died on Sunday at her home in Rome aged 103. <\/p>\n
She was the oldest living Nobel laureate at the time of her death. <\/p>\n
Levi-Montalcini shared the prize with colleague Stanley Cohen in 1986 for their ground-breaking discovery of growth factors. <\/p>\n
The Nobel committee cited the pair for advancing \"our knowledge from a stage when... growth factors were unknown, to a situation today when the role of growth factors in cell proliferation, organ differentiation, and tumour transformation is generally recognised.\" <\/p>\n
Their work has helped understanding of such disorders as cancer, birth defects and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. <\/p>\n
Enjoying great affection and respect in Italy, Levi-Montalcini intervened to defend the teaching of evolution in schools when, in 2004, the then education minister, Letizia Moratti, wanted to remove it from the curriculum. <\/p>\n
Born into a wealthy Jewish intellectual family in northern Turin in 1909, Levi-Montalcini was the daughter of an engineer and an artist. <\/p>\n
In 2001, Italy's then president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi named Levi-Montalcini a senator for life, an honour bestowed on former presidents and prominent figures in social, scientific, artistic or literary fields. <\/p>\n
In this role, she was the grand old lady of the Senate, taking pains to turn up for crucial votes in support of the Italian centre-left, even late in life when she was deaf and nearly blind. <\/p>\n
In 2007 she cut short a trip to Dubai to help then prime minister Romano Prodi survive a confidence vote. <\/p>\n
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