Italy · Nobel Prize laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini

Issue date22 Apr 2024

Total mintage3,000,000

EU maximum3,000,000

Editions4

Edge lettering2 ★ × 6, alternately upright/inverted

InscriptionRITA LEVI-MONTALCINI / RI / R / 2024 / SP

DesignerSilvia Petrassi

mintInstituto Poligrafico e Zecca Dello Stato, Roma

Issue occasion

The commemorative coin honours the scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini. The design shows her portrait based on a photograph by Manuela Fabbri, with a microscope on a horseshoe-shaped base in the background, which her brother Gino Levi-Montalcini had designed as a lucky charm for the awarding of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Above the portrait, “RITA LEVI-MONTALCINI” is inscribed in a semicircle.

The design

The design shows a portrait of Rita Levi-Montalcini in the foreground, based on a photograph by Manuela Fabbri. In the background, a microscope on a horseshoe-shaped pedestal can be seen. It comes from a medal that Gino Levi-Montalcini, brother of the famous scientist, once designed as a lucky charm for the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986.

Above the portrait, the inscription “RITA LEVI-MONTALCINI” is arranged in a semicircle; on the left is the abbreviation “RI” for the Italian Republic and the mark “R” of the mint in Rom. Below the coin design, the year of issue “2024” can be seen, while the initials of the coin designer Silvia Petrassi, “SP”, appear on the right.

The twelve stars of the European flag are depicted on the outer ring of the coin.

Background on the topic

Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin in 1909 into a Jewish family and studied medicine there. After completing her studies, she initially worked in neurological and psychiatric research. From 1938 onwards, the antisemitic racial laws of Fascist Italy excluded Jewish scientists from state universities and research institutions. Levi-Montalcini therefore continued her research under restricted conditions in a private laboratory. During the Second World War, she lived for periods under a false identity in Florence.

After the end of the war, she resumed her academic work. In 1947, she went to Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied the development of the nervous system using chicken embryos. The central question was what controlled the growth, formation and survival of nerve cells. This work led to research into nerve growth factor, the so-called Nerve Growth Factor (NGF). This protein acts as a signalling substance and influences certain nerve cells during their development and maintenance.

Levi-Montalcini received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with the biochemist Stanley Cohen. They were honoured for their discoveries of growth factors. The research helped explain molecular regulatory mechanisms of cell growth and cell differentiation and had an impact far beyond neurobiology.

Levi-Montalcini worked both in the United States and in Italy and was involved in establishing neurological and cell biology research institutions in Rome. In 2001, the Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi appointed her senator for life. In this capacity, she remained a member of the Italian Senate until her death in 2012.

The coin issue therefore commemorates not only her scientific work but also an Italian biography shaped by exclusion during Fascism, international research and later public engagement. No specific round anniversary is cited as the reason for the issue.