The mayor of Rome says biologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who conducted underground research in defiance of Fascist persecution, and went on to win a Nobel Prize for helping unlock the mysteries of the cell, has died at her home in the city. She was 103. Italy’s so-called “Lady of the Cells,” who died on Sunday, lived through anti-Semitic discrimination and Nazi invasion, becoming one of her country’s leading scientists and sharing the medicine prize for her ground-breaking research in the United States.
