Her Mind Gets Better With Age, Like Wine

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist said Saturday that even though she is about to turn 100, her mind is sharper than it was she when she was 20. Rita Levi Montalcini (who also serves as a senator for life in Italy), celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, & she spoke at a ceremony held in her honor by the European Brain Research Institute. She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells & organs. "At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20," she told the party, complete with a large cake for her. The Turin-born Levi Montalcini recounted how the anti-Jewish laws of the 1930s under Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime forced her to quit university & do research in an improvised laboratory in her bedroom at home. "Above all, don't fear difficult moments," she said. "The best comes from them."
"I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom," the scientist said. Her white hair elegantly coifed & wearing a smart navy blue suit, she raised a glass of sparkling wine in a toast to her long life.