Vale Rita Levi-Montalcini!

Taken from http://slowitaly.yourguidetoitaly.com/

Rita Levi-Montalcini has finally passed away at the grand old age of 103. In case you haven't heard of her, she was a scientist who won a Nobel Prize at one stage. During the Second World War, she was unable to work in a lab because she was Jewish and living in Mussolini's Italy, so she worked at home, using what she could get - eggs! Chicken embryos told her a lot about nerves. After the war, se went to the US at the invitation of a Viktor Hamburger. She ended up staying 30 years, winning a Nobel Prize with her colleague Stanley Cohen. Apparently, she was the only Nobel Laureate so far to live over a hundred years.

She discovered nerve growth factor, which could still have a big effect on things like Alzheimer's.

I wrote about her in my second book, Potions To Pulsars: Women Doing Science, which was about women scientists. In those days, most of my research was done at the State Library; the Internet was something I used once a week in one of the early Internet cafes. I had to look up a lot of science so I could understand what it was my heroines had achieved. I remember with this one, I was up late, working on my editing, when I heard a news item about a Sydney woman scientist who had found that we all had unformed brain cells which could be developed and I immediately thought,"Nerve growth factor!" I got a fax number for this scientist - yes, these were the days before I had my first email! -and wrote to ask her and she said yes,she had used NGF and I had another bit for my book.

Where a scientist was still around, I made contact to get them to check out the chapter about themselves - Rosalyn Sussman Yalow( brilliant work with insulin), Jocelyn Bell Burnell(radio astronomy, discovered pulsars) and Rita Levi-Montalcini. I can't even remember how I found all these addresses, but it wasn't online - I have never regretted studying librarianship, especially the reference section! You really learn how to look things up. But I faxed to Rome and gave them a fax number which turned out to be useless, because one evening I got a call from one of the great scientist's staff, who said every time she  tried to fax, someone on the other end picked up the phone and said,"Hello? Hello?" It was my friend Bart's fax/phone and not much use, it seemed. So I gave her my school's fax instead and her boss checked out my MS about herself. My publishers got in touch to ask for a photo and the chapter went into the book.

I suppose I admire her not only because of what she discovered, but because she made the most of what little she had and laid the foundations for her later work. I know about making the most of a little, but thinking of her really puts it into perspective. And she was going strong, right till the end. Sleep well, Rita - you have earned your rest!

Ada Lovelace Day

I have only just found out that today, October 16, is Ada Lovelace Day, in which we're encouraged to celebrate a woman of science.

Nothing wrong with this one. My second book for children, Potions To Pulsars: Women doing science, featured a chapter about her. I have a lot of favourite women of science, including some modern ones, who were kind enough to check the chapters about themselves. I'll do a full post about that and the research I did another day, but just a few lines about Ada,for whom the day is named.

She was born in 1815, the daughter of Lord Byron - yes, that Byron, colourful character, amazing poet and, in the words of a woman in his life,"mad, bad and dangerous to know", who has turned up in at least one novel as a vampire. He and his wife Annabella divorced, he left England and Ada never got to know him. 

Charles Babbage,"father of the computer"

Poor Ada didn't have much of a relationship with her mother either, it seems, but her mother did one thing for her that changed her life and probably the world: she had her taught mathematics. Ada, who was introduced to Charles Babbage,  known as the "father of the computer", became the word's first computer programmer. She translated some mathematical papers from Italian for him and added plenty of notes of her own, including what is the first computer program.

 Analytical Engine, the world's first computer

What if her parents had stayed married? Or if she'd left England with her father? How different might the world have been if, perhaps, she'd become a poet like him instead of studying maths and science with the likes of science writer Mary Somerville? Anyone want to write an alternative universe story about this?

Unfortunately, one of the things Ada used her maths skills for was to design a betting system for the races. Of course, she ended up in huge debt. She died when she was only 36, of cancer.

Thing is, she was a female mathematical genius in a time when nice girls didn't do that sort of thing. Actually, judging from some of the crazy things she did in her lifetime, she was probably regarded as anything but a nice girl! But I have always had a soft spot for her.

So let's raise our glasses in a toast to Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace!