Interview mit Rita Levi-Montalcini, Neurologin, Nobel Prize in Medicine.
22/12/2005
– How To Get Your 100 Celebrate years?
– Ah, i do not know, whether I shall live, and also I do not like the celebrations. What interests me and makes me happy, is this, what I do every day!
– And what do you do?
– I work for scholarships for African girls, so that they study and thrive, themselves and their countries. And I research further, I always think ..
– Do not go into retirement.
– Never! The retirement destroys the brains! Many people retire or pass on … And that kills your brain. And they get sick.
– And how is your brain?
– Just like when I 20 was! I notice no difference in illusions or skills. Tomorrow I fly to a medical conference …
– But any genetic limit will exist …
– No, my brain will soon be a century old… but it does not know the senility. My body gets wrinkles, this is inevitable, but not the brain!
– How to make the?
– We enjoy a high degree of neuronal plasticity: Although the neurons die, rearrange itself to the remaining, for the same functions to maintain, but one should stimulate them!
– Help me, to do it.
– Keep your brain stimulated, active, let it work, and it will never degenerate.
– And I'll live longer?
– You will live better the years, You have to live the, that's the interesting thing. The key is, Curiosity, To keep striving, To have passions…
– Hers was the scientific research …
– And, and it is still.
– They discovered, as the cells of the nervous system to grow and renew itself …
– And, year 1942, I called it nerve growth factor (NGF, Nerve growth factor of the lichen), and almost half a century it has been questioned, until it was recognized in its validity and to me a year 1986 gave the Nobel Prize for!
– How was an Italian girl with twenty years neuroscientist?
– As a child I had to study the effort. My father wanted me to marry well, I was a good woman, be a good mother… And I refused. I stood up and confessed, that I wanted to study …
– What a frustration for your father, not true?
– And, but I did not have a happy childhood: I was the ugly duckling and stupid, insignificant … My older brothers were very brilliant, and I felt so inferior …
– I see, that you did it to one incentive …
– I was encouraged by the example of the physician Albert Schweitzer, was in Africa, to alleviate the leprosy. I wanted to help those suffering, that was my big dream …!
– And they did… with your science.
– And today you help the girls in Africa, so that they can study. Let us fight against the disease, and, but things will get better, if only the oppression of women would stop in Islamic countries …!
– Religion slowed cognitive development (of knowledge)?
– If religion women compared to men marginalized, removed it from the cognitive development.
– Are there differences between the brains of men and women?
– Only in the function of the brain associated with emotions, associated with the endocrine system. But with regard to cognitive function, there is no difference.
– Why are there still so few women scientists?
– It is not so! Many scientific discoveries were the men attributed, were in fact of his sisters, Wives and daughters !
– Really?
– They gave the female intelligence and not to let them in the shade. Today, there is fortunately more women than men in scientific research: the heirs of Hypatia!
– The manner of Alexandria in the fourth-century …
– We will not murdered on the street of misogynist Christian monks, as they. Since then, the world has improved somewhat …
– No one has tried, To kill you …
– During Fascism, Mussolini wanted to imitate Hitler's persecution of the Jews… and I had to hide for a while. But I did not stop to investigate: I built my lab in my bedroom on… and discovered the apoptosis, programmed cell death of!
– Why is there such a high percentage of Jews among scientists and intellectuals?
– The exclusion has encouraged the intellective work of Jews: you can ban them all, but not to think! And it's true, that there are many Jews among the Nobel Laureates …
– How do you explain the Nazi madness?
– Hitler and Mussolini were able to speak to the masses, where always the emotional brain to the neocortex has priority, the intellectual. They managed, To handle emotions, not reason!
– Does this happen now ?
– Why do you think, that in many US schools taught creationism instead of evolution?
– The ideology is emotion, it is nonsense?
– The reason is the daughter of imperfection. In the invertebrates everything is programmed: they are perfect. We, not! And as imperfect, we have resorted to reason, to the ethical values: to distinguish between good and evil is the highest degree of Darwinian evolution!
– They were never married, They have no children?
– No, I went into the jungle of the nervous system and was so fascinated by its beauty, I gave him all my time, my life!
– Will we one day Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, cure dementia …?
– Healing … What we will achieve, is all to slow these diseases, delay, to minimize .
– What is your biggest dream today?
– That we come one day to maximize use of cognitive ability of our brain.
– When you have not felt as ugly duckling?
– I am still aware of my limitations!
– What was the best of your life?
– Helping others.
– What would you do today, if they 20 Years old were?
– But I do it!
From a PPS in Spanish
Translation into German Carina
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