Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini, who pursued science despite her father's views

The famous laughing old lady with a glass: winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Rita Levi-Montalcini, known not only for her scientific achievements but also for her active political stance, her public engagement and her charisma. Rita's father was against higher education for women: your place is by the domestic hearth and beside your children, he held. But Rita and her sisters went their own way, paying no heed to the prejudices by which their family lived. Levi-Montalcini never married and had no children, but she said more than once that she had not the slightest regret and never felt lonely, for she was surrounded by remarkable people, had work she loved and a multitude of interests. She lived long and happily and died in her own home at the age of 103. I wish all women and girls to live as they please, to have equal rights and opportunities with men, not to be ashamed of their aspirations and not to stop short of fulfilling their desires, and, of course, to find their love, be it the work of a lifetime, a person or anything at all ❤️