MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH
Rita Levi Montalcini - Interview - November 2008
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2:10
Video page URL
https://multimedia-english.com/videos/esl/rita-levi-montalcini-interview-november-2008-4187
Description

Rita Levi-Montalcini (22 April 1909 – 30 December 2012) was an Italian neurologist who, together with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). She died in her home in Rome at the age of 103. (Wikipedia)
If you want to live to a 100, you might consider following Rita Levi-Montalcini’s routine: get up at five in the morning, eat just once a day, at lunchtime, keep your brain active, and go to bed at 11pm.
The secret, she says, is work: she still goes to her laboratory every morning to supervise an all-female team developing her Nobel prize-winning research on brain cells, and in the afternoon she goes across town to her foundation in another part of Rome raising funds to help African women to study.
“I have never been ill, and I don’t see the impairment of my hearing and sight as a handicap,” she says. She wears a hearing aid, and peers at you closely when you talk to her, but tells you — convincingly — “my brain functions better today than it did was I was 20”. (2009, http://excelle.monster.com )

Interview with Rita Levi-Montalcini (30 minutes)
Interview with the 1986 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine Rita Levi-Montalcini in Rome, Italy, 26 November 2008. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org. Rita Levi-Montalcini talks about her daily work in the institute, why she had to make a laboratory in her bedroom to conduct research during World War II (3:06), the benefits of working in isolation (5:03), her post-war move to the United States (6:25), her work with Stanley Cohen and the discovery of nerve growth factor (7:15), the roles of intuition and chance in biological research (15:14), her current research (16:58), her advice to young scientists (17:41), and why this period of her life has been the best so far (28:10).