As a homeschooling parent and GeekMom, I am a big fan of doing science at home. And no one epitomized that idea for me more than neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini.
Levi-Montalcini, who died in Rome Sunday at the age of 103, received the Nobel Prize in 1986 along with her colleague Stanley Cohen for their discovery of the chemical signals used by cells to communicate with one another. Amazingly, Levi-Montalcini did her early research into nerve growth by studying chicken embryos in a makeshift laboratory in her bedroom.
What Levi-Montalcini uncovered was the mechanism that allows developing organisms to reach their final form through the selective pruning of unnecessary cells. Human fingers, for example, are webbed as they develop in the womb, but later separate when the cells making up the webbing die off at a pre-programmed point in the fetus’ development. She went on to isolate the chemicals that tell cancer cells to keep growing from snake venom and mouse saliva.