A brief history of neutrinos' oscillations

I just write a more detailed post about the model behind neutrino's oscillations. Here I would simply recall that the idea was proposed by Bruno Pontecorvo in 1957 and developed by Ziro Maki, Masami Nakagawa e Shoichi Sakata in 1962. Today I try to summarize the experimental way.

via nobelprize.org

Rita Levi-Montalcini, artist of science

portrait by orticanoodles - source: deviantart | flickr

Rita Levi-Montalcini was born on the 22nd april 1909 at Turin, Italy. In 1938 she came in Belgium because of the italian racial laws. After the war, she came back in Italy, at Asti, where she prepared a little laboratory in order to study the nervous system of chickens. In 1947, with her friend Renato Dulbecco, went in USA where she worked until 1977. In 1986 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine with her pupil Stanley Cohen

for their discoveries of growth factors.

About the potential of the NGF, she wrote in her Nobel Lecture:

For instance, whenever cell death of specific neuronal populations may be linked to a decreased local availability of neurotrophic factors, such as NGF, its exogenous supply or stimulation of its endogenous production via pharmacological agents may offer a promising approach to presently incurable diseases.

About the role of the women in science, she said:

Humanity is made ​​up of men and women must be represented by both sexes.

In 1975 she was was supported by the italian farmaceutical industry Fidia, but in about a decade was discovered that the advetrised drug was harmful. About this story she said to Riccardo Chiaberge:

Of course, I must admit that I yelled to see my name linked to Fidia. But I thought it was the price to pay, I don't care about anything to get some help for research. If we prevent the industry to help the laboratory, we die.

She had aprecise opinion on the relationship between young people and technology:

Today, compared to yesterday, young people benefit from an extraordinary breadth of information, and the price is the hypnotic effect exerted by television screens disaccustoming them to reason (in addition robbing them of time to devote to the study, sports and games that stimulate their creative capacity). They create for them a definite reality that inhibits their ability to "invent the world" and destroys the charm of the unknown.

In this sense she was an example for all of us:

I lost a little the eyesight, much the hearing. At the conferences I don't see the projections and don't hear so good. But I think more now than when I was twenty. The body does what it wants. I am not the body, I am the mind.

She passed away on the 30th december 2012 at Rome, Italy.

I've never been able to keep a log. Everything in me is imagination, intuition. Nothing is scientific.
I am not a scientist, I'm an artist of science.

---

Levi-Montalcini R. (1987). The nerve growth factor: Thirty-five years later, Bioscience Reports, 7 (9) 681-699. DOI: 10.1007/BF01116861 (pdf)
Quotes by Rita Levi-Montalcini (italian)
Biographies on Wikipedia: italian | english
An interview with Tullio Regge (italian)

Renato Dulbecco

Renato Dulbecco was born on the 22nd february 1914 at Catanzaro, Italy. He worked between Italy and USA, where he went for the first time in 1947 with Rita Levi-Montalcini. He winned Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975 with David Baltimore and Howard Martin Temin

for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell

At the conclusion of his Nobel Lecture he said:

This discussion about cancer prevention is a development of the experimental results obtained in the field of oncogenic viruses, but it is also strongly influenced by the new social conscience of many scientists. Historically, science and society have gone separate ways, although society has provided the funds for science to grow and in return science has given society all the material things it enjoys. In recent years, however, the separation between science and society has become excessive, and the consequences are felt especially by biologists. Thus, while we spend our life asking questions about the nature of cancer and ways to prevent or cure it, society merrily produces oncogenic substances and permeates the environment with them. Society does not seem prepared to accept the sacrifices required for an effective prevention of cancer. The situation is clearly unacceptable, and we biologists would like to see it corrected. We have ourselves begun to put our house in order, by banning some experiments that may contain a risk for mankind. We would like to see society take a similar attitude, abandoning selfish practices that are dangerous for society itself. We would also like to see a new co-operation of science and society for the benefit of all mankind and hope that the dominant forces in society will recognize that this is a necessity.

Recently (2008) he also writes:

We are at a turning point in the study of tumor virology and cancer in general. If we wish to learn more about cancer, we must now concentrate on the cellular genome. We are back to where cancer research started, but the situation is drastically different because we have new knowledge and crucial tools, such as DNA cloning. We have two options: either to try to discover the genes important in malignancy by a piecemeal approach, or to sequence the whole genome ofa selected animal species. The former approach seems less formidable, but it will still require a vast investment of research, especially if the important genes differ in cancers of different organs and if they encode regulatory proteins. A major difficulty for conventional approaches is the heterogeneity of tumors and the lack of cultures representative of the various cell types present in a cancer. I think that it will be far more useful to begin by sequencing the cellular genome. The sequence will make it possible to prepare probes for all the genes and to classify them for their expression in various cell types at the level of individual cells by means of cytological hybridization. The classification of the genes will facilitate the identification of those involved in progression.⁽²⁾

He passed away on the 19th february 2012 at La Jolla, USA.

In one generation we have come a long way in our efforts to understand cancer. The next generation can look forward to exciting new tasks that may lead to a completion of our knowledge about cancer, closing one of the most challenging chapters in biological research.⁽²⁾