The View out my Jewelry Lab Window

A few years ago a friend made an addition to my modest collection of roses. His gift was a rose plant by the name of Rita Levi-Montalcini which I planted by my jewelry lab window. It is a floribunda and blooms constantly and profusely ten months of the year. The blooms are an attractive pink with yellow and coral tones. And, unknown to my friend, the name of the rose had and has personal meaning to me.

I first heard the name of Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini when I was working in a brain research lab in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the head of what we considered to be our rival lab for funding and scientific exposure. Dr. Levi-Montalcini had already identified the Nerve Growth Factor and was internationally known as a dedicated scientist.

My next near contact with Dr. Levi-Montalcini happened several years latter when we moved to Rome, Italy. An Italian colleague from the lab in the U.S. was then working in Dr. Montalicini’s new Laboratory of Cellular Biology in Rome and he said there would be a job opening for me. But I had fallen in love with making jewelry and changed careers.

Dr. Levi-Montalcini has since been awarded the Nobel Prize (1986) for Physiology and, in particular, for identifying the Nerve Growth Factor. She has been appointed a life-time senator in the Italian Parliament. Recently Dr. Montalcini celebrated her 100th birthday with the mayo of Rome. I look at my flowering rose bush and think how well it represents the long and fruitful life of Rita Levi-Montalcini.

In Italy, roses bloom first and best during the month of May. And this is the best time to pay a visit to the Rome’s Rose Garden. The Roseto Comunale di Roma opens the 17th of May this year, the day after the winners for the best new roses have been chosen in the yearly, internationally know contest.