“I am deeply touched by this great honour that has been given to me today; it is a great pleasure and a honour to receive this award while being myself still alive”.

Rita Levi Montalcini has accepted with this disarming irony the Laurea Honoris Causa in Science by the Mc Gill University of Canada.

The ceremony, that has been followed also live in streaming on the internet, took place last 23rd February at the rector's office of the Univeristy La Sapienza in Rome.

Canadian Rector Anthony Masi, during the ceremony, has stated that as the tradition of the Mc Gills University wants, “people awarded with the honoris causa must be individuals that have considerably contributed to knowledge and to the society in general and who in their professional and personal lives represent and reflect the principles of the University such as research, teaching and service to the society”.

He also said that, besides to obvious credits, Nobel price Rita Levi Montalcini receives an award for the science because of the number of publications that enriched the cultural heritage of humanity and because of her fight in defence of human rights, doctor Montalcini would have deserved other two prizes in arts and law, which are also conferred by the same institution he represents.

Besides the praise of the doctor pronunced by the Magnificent rector Luigi Frati, thanking all the consuls of the respective embassies and the hosting University, rector Masi has underlined also another aspect that makes this ceremony a real historical event. Only twice, in its almost two hundred years of history, has the Mc Gill Univeristy left its own base to confer an honoris causa award: the first time took place during the second World War, intended to confer the price to Franklin Delano Roosvelt and Winston Churchill; respectively a President of the USA and the Britannic Prime Minister. This is then the second time.

Closing the ceremony a question raised by Luigi Frati on the secret of Doctor Rita Levi Montalcini who in a few days would had turned 102. “It is the taste of work; since I was a child I decided to become something, but I did not know what. Not mother, nor wife, something that I like more, I said to myself, and so it went”.


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Translation: A. Bianco