1983 CE:  SPIEGELMAN

New York: Molecular Biologist Sol Spiegelman dies at 68.

Author of over 350 papers, with general focus on DNA and RNA. CCNY (1939), Columbia (1940), post–graduate work at Washington University (1942–44). Fellow at University of Minnesota, Faculty of University of Illinois.

Credited with an experiment with self–replicating RNA structures called Spiegelman’s Monster. Spiegelman was the recipient of the Lasker Award (1974) and the Feltrinelli International Prize in Biology (1981).

1983 CE:  RITA LEVI–MONTALCINI

–awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Received the prize—along with colleague Stanley Cohen—for their discovery of NGF (Nerve Growth Factor).

Born in 1909, as of 2008 she was the oldest living Nobel laureate. Born in Turin Italy to a Sephardic Jewish family, her father Adamo Levi was an electrician and gifted mathematician, and her mother Adele, a talented painter. Rita is an honorific Senator for Life in the Italian Senate.

1983 CE:  STANLEY N. COHEN

–receives National Medal of Science…

…for groundbreaking 1972 work at the NIH (National Institute of Health)—with Herbert Boyer, in genetic engineering. Their focus was in developing methods to combine and transplant genes. Born in Perth Amboy, NJ, Cohen most recently playing with genes at Stanford.