The Remarkable Rita Levi-Montalcini

Late April saw the one hundredth birthday of a remarkable woman. As the oldest living recipient of a Nobel award, she still works every day and puts her remarkable longevity down to her own discovery – NGF (Nerve Growth Factor). So astonishing is her vitality at her centenary year that many have asked the question – does this woman have the secret of eternal life? Not only that, as a Jew her own life took many dramatic turns in the Europe of Hitler and Mussolini. It is a life which, if depicted in a movie, would have many people incredulous that the makers would think they could get away with something quite so unbelievable.
Her discoveries almost never happened. Her father, Adamo Levi, believed in the Victorian idea that women were not meant to go in to the professions and as such forbad his daughters to enroll at university. He relented finally when his daughter was twenty and she graduated with a summa cum laude degree in Medicine and Surgery from Turin University in 1936.
This was the same year as the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics when African-American athlete Jesse Owens thwarted Hitler’s plan to display Aryan superiority to the world. It was a plan in which Levi-Montalcini, as a Jewish-Italian, was later to be caught up. Inspired by the Nazis, the Laws of Race laid down by Mussolini in 1938, she was effectively barred from her postgraduate academic work in Italy. She worked in Brussels for a time but had to flee Belgium on the eve of the German invasion in 1940.
Returning to Turin, she was forced to conduct her own research and remarkably managed to build her own research unit in her bedroom where her research in to nerves properly began. Her old tutor from university, Giuseppe Levi, another person in flight from the tidal wave of Nazism flooding Western Europe, joined her shortly after, ironically as her assistant.
Turin was destined to be bombed by Anglo-American forces in 1941 but undeterred, Levi-Montalcini moved to a cottage in the countryside outside of the city and rebuilt her laboratory there – resuming her experiments till the Fall of 1943. Her work was interrupted yet again by the German invasion of Italy in 1943 which forced her to flee to Florence. It was there that she lived underground until the end of the war.
When Florence was liberated by the allies she was employed as medical doctor. Assigned to a refugee camp she dealt with the thousands of refugees escaping the still raging war in the north. Levi-Montalcini fought epidemics of disease at this camp, sharing the imminent danger of death from such illnesses as abdominal typhoid with her countless patients.
Resuming her academic position at the University of Turin at the conclusion of the war, Levi-Montalcini was invited in 1947 by Viktor Hamburger. Like many scientists, the cessation of hostilities in Europe led her to America, to the city of St Louis. The proposal there was a repetition of the experiments she had performed on chick embryos year later. She accepted the position and the rest is history, both literally and metaphorically. Planning only to stay for the duration of the initial experiments, which was ten months, Levi-Montalcini would remain in the United States until 1977.
In 1986 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for her research in to NGF. Specifically, she studied the amino acids and proteins in cells which enable them to grow. The studies also involved the specialization of these elements of cells. Her vitality today, amazing for a lady of such advanced years, may well be down to NGF.
Every day, Levi-Montalcini, doses herself with eye drops, which is not unusual when people grow older. However, her eye drops are special. They contain NGF. It emerges that the molecules have a direct impact on brain function. NGF helps neurons to survive for much longer. As neurons in the brain start to be lost during our teenage years, it is thought that the eye drops have helped Doctor Levi-Montalcini to retain her neurons and their related activity much longer than the average person. Present findings indicate that eye NGF application may represent an alternative route to prevent degeneration of NGF-receptive neurons involved in disorders such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons.
As someone who suffered under the far-right regime in Italy in the thirties and forties, if Dr Levi-Montalcini is capable of feeling the joy of revenge then it came in 2001 when she was made a senator for life in her native country. Between 2005 and 2007 (when 98 years old) she played a pivotal role in keeping the center-left government afloat and earned the chagrin of the right-wing opposition. This time, however, they could not persecute her or bomb her.Doctor Levi-Montalcini, we salute you.

Immanence of God

The famous Sufi poet Jalaludin Rumi expresses the Immanence of God in his poem:

 

"I looked about me to find him
He was not on the cross
I went to the idol temple
to the ancient pagoda
no trace of Him was visible there
I bent the reins of search to the Kaaba
He was not in that resort of the old and young
I questioned Ibn Sina of His state
He was not in Ibn Sina's range
I gazed into my own heart
There I saw Him"

Search

Mind is soaring for the search of blessing
Words are undulating for the search of truth.
Wind is blowing for the search of freedom.
Heart is blasting for the search of passion.

Words of MAUM

The Vision

I climbed and climbed ,Where is the peak, my Lord?

I ploughed and ploughed,Where is the knowledge treasure, my Lord?

I sailed and sailed,Where is the island of peace, my Lord?

Almighty, bless my nation With vision and sweat resulting into happiness

Words of APJ Abdul Kalam Kalam in “The Vision”--> his favorite poem which he recited it in Parliament.....

How leaders should manage failure?

During the Wharton India Economic Forumin Philadelphia, Kalam spoke with India Knowledge@Wharton about his career as a scientist, his vision for India's future, and the most important traits for leaders, among other issues.

India Knowledge@Wharton: How leaders should manage failure?

APJ Abdul Kalam Kalam: Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India's "Rohini" satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.
By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts -- I had four or five of them with me -- told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal. It was a big failure.
That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference -- where journalists from around the world were present -- was at 7:45 am at ISRO's satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure -- he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.
The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite -- and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, "You conduct the press conference today."
I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team.
The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

The Salon Interview | Arundhati Roy

People around the world are asking, "What does it mean to be an Indian novelist today? What does it mean to be Indian?" Will readers find the answers to these questions in "The God of Small Things"?

You know, I think that a story is like the surface of water. And you can take what you want from it. Its volubility is its strength. But I feel irritated by this idea, this search. What do we mean when we ask, "What is Indian? What is India? Who is Indian?" Do we ask, "What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be British?" as often? I don't think that it's a question that needs to be asked, necessarily. I don't think along those lines, anyway. I think perhaps that the question we should ask is, "What does it mean to be human?"
I don't even feel comfortable with this need to define our country. Because it's bigger than that! How can one define India? There is no one language, there is no one culture. There is no one religion, there is no one way of life. There is absolutely no way one could draw a line around it and say, "This is India" or, "This is what it means to be Indian." The whole world is seeking simplification. It's not that easy. I don't believe that one clever movie or one clever book can begin to convey what it means to be Indian. Of course, every writer of fiction tries to make sense of their world. Which is what I do. There are some things that I don't do, though. Like try to make claims of what influenced my book. And I will never "defend" my book either. When I write, I lay down my weapons and give the book to the reader.

India can become a Nation

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led by thee into ever widening thought and action-Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Words of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, in "Gitanjali"