In 1938, the dictator Benito Mussolini published the “Manifesto per la Difesa della Razza” that prohibited any Jewish person from entering academic and professional careers. Because of this, a young neurologist named Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909 – 2012) was forced to leave the university, where she worked as an assistant to the histologist Giuseppe Levi.
However, far from abandoning her passion, Rita improvised a laboratory in her home and there, in the midst of World War II, she began her studies on the nervous system. Years later he settled at the University of St. Louis (USA) and in that period he discovered the protein NGF, which would earn him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1986.
Rita Levi-Montalcini was a woman who did not give up in the face of adversity and managed to dedicate her life to what she wanted, avoiding the racial laws and canons of the time that urged her to limit herself to being a mother and wife and abandon her professional development . Who better, therefore, to tell us about them, the pioneers, other women of all ages who made their particular contribution to science.
‘The pioneers’ (Ed. Criticism), written by Rita Levi-Montalcini and Giuseppina Tripodi , is described as “a book destined for the new generations. Its objective is to make them aware of the fundamental scientific contributions that their ancestors made from two centuries before the Christian era to the 20th century. For centuries women were excluded. In the past those who stood out were considered witches and were sent to the stake, and even when this persecution, as fierce as it was absurd, was abolished, philosophers and scientists, including those known as ‘enlightened’, continued to feed the myth of the absolute intellectual superiority of man ”.
We have made a selection of some of the pioneers described in this exciting book full of biographies of women scientists of all time. A book that calls women to fulfill themselves intellectually and to pursue their goals. We are left with these words from the authors themselves: “By recognizing equality for women in the exercise of their functions, it is desired that members of the new generations, regardless of their gender, enjoy the right to freely use their own Intelectual skills. A right that was denied to their ancestors ”.
