Fabio Campana / EPA file

Rita Levi Montalcini, who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1986 for her discovery of nerve growth factor, the first substance known to regulate the growth of cells, in a Feb. 23, 2007, file photo.

ROME -- Rita Levi-Montalcini, a biologist who conducted underground research during World War II in defiance of Fascist persecution and went on to win a Nobel Prize for helping unlock the mysteries of the cell, died at her home on Sunday. She was 103 and had worked well into her final years.

Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, announcing her death in a statement, called it a great loss "for all of humanity." He praised her as someone who represented "civic conscience, culture and the spirit of research of our time."

Italy's so-called "Lady of the Cells," a Jew who lived through anti-Semitic discrimination and the Nazi invasion, became one of her country's leading scientists and shared the Nobel medicine prize in 1986 with American biochemist Stanley Cohen for their groundbreaking research carried out in the United States. The research increased the understanding of many conditions, including tumors, developmental malformations, and senile dementia.

Italy honored Levi-Montalcini in 2001 by making her a senator-for-life.

A petite woman with upswept white hair, she kept an intensive work schedule well into old age. "At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20," she said in 2009.

"A beacon of life is extinguished" with her death, said a niece, Piera Levi-Montalcini, who is a city councilwoman in Turin. The ANSA news agency quoted her as saying her aunt didn't suffer.

Levi-Montalcini was born April 22, 1909, to a Jewish family in the northern city of Turin. At age 20 she overcame her father's objections that women should not study and obtained a degree in medicine and surgery from Turin University in 1936.

She studied under top anatomist Giuseppe Levi, whom she often credited for her own success and for that of two fellow students and close friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, who also became Nobel Prize winners. Levi and Levi-Montalcini were not related.

After graduating, Levi-Montalcini began working as a research assistant in neurobiology but lost her job in 1938 when Italy's Fascist regime passed laws barring Jews from universities and major professions.

Her family decided to stay in Italy and, as World War II neared, Levi-Montalcini created a makeshift lab in her bedroom where she began studying the development of chicken embryos, which would later lead to her major discovery of mechanisms that regulate growth of cells and organs.

With eggs becoming a rarity due to the war, the young scientist biked around the countryside to buy them from farmers. She was soon joined in her secret research by Levi, her university mentor, who was also Jewish and who became her assistant.

"She worked in primitive conditions," Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack told Sky TG24 TV in a tribute to her fellow scientist. "She is really someone to be admired."

The 1943 German invasion of Italy forced the Levi-Montalcini family to flee to Florence and live underground. After the Allies liberated the city, she worked as a doctor at a center for refugees.

In 1947 Levi-Montalcini was invited to the United States, where she remained for more than 20 years, which she called "the happiest and most productive" period of her life. She held dual Italian-U.S. citizenship.

During her research at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, she discovered nerve growth factor, the first substance known to regulate the growth of cells. She showed that when tumors from mice were transplanted to chicken embryos they induced rapid growth of the embryonic nervous system. She concluded that the tumor released a nerve growth-promoting factor that affected certain types of cells.

The research increased the understanding of many conditions, including tumors, developmental malformations, and senile dementia. It also led to the discovery by Cohen of another substance, epidermal growth factor, which stimulates the proliferation of epithelial cells.

Another Italian scientist, who worked for some 40 years with Levi-Montalcini, including in the United States, said the work the Nobel laureate did on nerve growth factor was continuing.

"Over the years, this field of investigation has become ever more important in the world of neuroscience," Pietro Calissano was quoted by ANSA as saying. "… We are working on a possible application in the treatment of Alzheimer's."

Levi-Montalcini returned to Italy to become the director of the laboratory of cell biology of the National Council of Scientific Research in Rome in 1969.

After retiring in the late 1970s, she continued to work as a guest professor and wrote several books to popularize science. She created the Levi-Montalcini Foundation to grant scholarships and promote educational programs worldwide, particularly for women in Africa.

She also became active in Parliament, especially between 2006 and 2008, when she and other life senators would cast their votes to back the thin majority of center-left Premier Romano Prodi.

Levi-Montalcini had no children and never married, fearing such ties would undercut her independence.

"I never had any hesitation or regrets in this sense," she said in a 2006 interview. "My life has been enriched by excellent human relations, work and interests. I have never felt lonely."

There was no immediate announcement of funeral or memorial services.

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Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP - Getty Images

The 2012 Nobel Literature Prize laureate, Mo Yan of China, poses for photographers during a press conference of the 2012 Nobel Literature Prize laureate in Stockholm.

BEIJING — When the Swedish Academy selected Chinese writer, Mo Yan, as this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the move was hailed by the state media, only two years after blasting the same committee for awarding the peace prize to fellow countryman and outspoken dissident Liu Xiaobo.

However, outside of the country,  some critics pointedly questioning Mo’s Communist Party membership, his unwillingness to speak up for freedom of speech on the mainland and his apparent reluctance to speak out for his fellow laureate. "Giving the award to a writer like this is an insult to humanity and to literature," declared noted Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei, at the time.

Perhaps sensing the backlash, Mo spoke out the evening his Nobel victory was announced, telling journalists he hoped Liu — who is currently serving an 11-year sentence for his work on a direct call for political liberalization known as Charter 08 — could “achieve his freedom as soon as possible.”

The supportive words seemed to help give Mo the benefit of the doubt among critics and the foreign press, but comments he gave on Thursday regarding Chinese censorship and Liu’s plight have reinvigorated criticism of the acclaimed writer.

'The highest principle'
During an interview in Stockholm, Mo surprisingly defended China’s suppression of free speech, saying that censorship should not prevent the truth, but that rumors and defamation "should be censored."

"But I also hope that censorship, per se, should have the highest principle," Mo added.

Mo Yan's Nobel win celebrated -- and panned -- in China

Mo went on to liken censorship to the airport security he passed through flying to Stockholm.

"When I was taking my flight, going through the customs ... they also wanted to check me even taking off my belt and shoes," he said. "But I think these checks are necessary."

Special coverage of China: Behind the Wall on NBCNews.com

Mo caused further ripples when he told reporters he did not plan to sign an appeal being passed around by his peers calling for the immediate release of Liu and his wife, Liu Xia.

It has been signed by134 fellow Nobel laureates, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Always an 'independent'
Mo explained his unwillingness to sign as a desire to maintain his independence.

"I have always been independent. I like it that way. When someone forces me to do something, I don't do it," he said.

For Chinese winner's wife, Nobel is no prize

Mo’s comments and reticence in voicing support for his compatriot, Liu, was seen as particularly appalling as it came the same day as the publishing of a distressing interview with Liu’s wife, Liu Xia.

The interview, made possibly only after AP reporters slipped by Chinese security away at lunch, was the first she had given in 26 months and graphically showed the emotional stress of being under home detention since her husband’s imprisonment. 

China’s reception of Liu Xiabo and Mo Yan’s Nobel victories couldn’t have been any more different.

While Mo Yan’s award this year has been hailed in state media – despite many of his books being censored in China – Liu’s victory was roundly rejected by Beijing.

In a statement issued by the foreign ministry soon after the 2010 announcement, the government wrote that Liu’s victory "runs completely counter to the principle of the prize and is also a blasphemy to the peace prize.”

Wang Wei / EPA

Nobel Prize-winning writer Mo Yan holds a press conference in his hometown of Gaomi, in China's Shandong province, on Friday.

BEIJING -- State media gave the official stamp of approval Friday over the decision to award the Nobel Prize for literature to Chinese novelist Mo Yan, giving him front-page coverage across the country.

The warm coverage of the award is unsurprising considering the prestige and recognition that China's ruling Communist Party will collectively bask in as a result.

But in another sense, the warm reception for the awarding is striking considering the anger and hysteria drummed up by Beijing following the 2010 awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned political dissident, Liu Xiaobo.

In the two years that have followed Liu’s win, which was heavily censored in state media, China has maintained a chilly relationship with the Nobel committee and its home country of Norway. Meetings with Norwegian ministers and trade delegations have been canceled and important talks regarding the eventual opening of the Arctic Sea route have been halting.

China even went so far as to develop its own ill-fated peace prize, while exports of Norway’s famed salmon fell victim to the frigid political atmosphere between the two countries.

China’s first Nobel-winning writer?
But Mo’s victory seems to have thawed the relationship long enough for China to celebrate the writer, who state media has hailed as the country’s first winner of the prize.

"This is the first Chinese writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature," gushed China’s People’s Daily newspaper. "Chinese writers have waited too long, the Chinese people have waited too long."

But critics of the Communist regime point out that Gao Xingjian, who won in 2000 in part for his critical writing of the government, was China’s first winner of the Nobel for literature. He had been exiled to France by the time the prize was awarded.

Mo Yan, which means "don't speak," is actually a pen name. The 57-year-old Mo's real name is Guan Moye.

Mo has been favorably compared to American author William Faulkner and is perhaps best known in the West for his 1987 book, Red Sorghum. That book heavily relied on his experience growing up in a farming community in China's northeastern province of Shandong.

That honest connection to the rural experience has been a central thread through much of Mo’s writing, according to Dai Wei, a professor of literature at China’s Jinan University.

Special coverage of China: Behind the Wall on NBCNews.com

"Mo's topics are typically about rural life and his own life experiences, his stories are very close parallels to the real circumstances he lived through," Dai told NBC News. "He often writes about suffering. ... Some people think he glorifies suffering for Westerners, but everything he writes is based on real experience."

'The dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature'
Mo latest book, Frog, tells the dark story of a midwife who enthusiastically goes about her work enforcing China’s family-planning laws through forced abortions and sterilizations. The story, a searing critique of China’s one-child policy, won China’s Mao Dun Literature Prize last year.

"A writer should express criticism ... at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression," Mo said in a speech at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair.

Chinese author Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize in literature

But despite the critical and popular acclaim and Mo’s willingness to confront sensitive social issues in China, Mo’s victory has not come without criticism.

“Giving the award to a writer like this is an insult to humanity and to literature,” declared noted Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei to the British newspaper The Independent. "It’s shameful for the committee to have made this selection which does not live up to the previous quality of literature in the award."

Ai’s diatribe toward Mo appears to be rooted in part to his work on a book last year to celebrate the 70th anniversary of a speech given by Mao Zedong.

More book reviews and news on TODAY.com

Mao’s speech, known as the "Speech at Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature" set the guidelines for appropriate subject matter for Chinese writers and artists of that revolutionary period, calling upon them to focus on and espouse the merits of Communism and threatening punishment to those who did not bend to the will of the party.

Mo Yan and around 100 other Chinese writers and artists hand-copied paragraphs from the speech for the book.

Criticism
That act, in conjunction with Mo’s position as vice chairman of the government-backed Chinese Writer’s Association, which has failed to voice support toward fellow writer Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize victory, has raised the ire of artists like Ai who wonder just how committed Mo Yan is to free expression.

Complete Asia-Pacific coverage on NBCNews.com

After all, critics argue, if a Nobel Prize-winning author with a leadership position in the national writing guild fails to stand up for a fellow artist, then who will?

Not fair, said professor Dai.

"I don’t agree with Ai Weiwei, it's just his personal opinion," said Dai. "People have different values, so they evaluate people differently. I think Mo Yan is a great author and Mo Yan is prized by the Nobel Prize council."

Perhaps sensing the backlash against him, Mo spoke out Friday afternoon from his hometown. Mo told reporters he hoped that Liu Xiaobo "can achieve his freedom as soon as possible." He also noted that he had read Liu’s literary criticisms from the 1980s and that the dissident had the right to research his "politics and social system."

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

Other supporters of Mo have also came to his defense, noting that many of his books have been banned in China and that the Nobel victory will help put Chinese literature on the map.

But few believe that the victory will help put Liu Xiaobo back on the map in China, where his victory is still not acknowledged by the government. Liu’s name and the term "Nobel Peace Prize" remain blocked terms on China’s twitter-like service, Weibo.

Just this week, a BBC report on Liu’s imprisonment noted that the activist and his wife, who remains under illegal house arrest, have been facing extraordinary pressure to accept exile from China in exchange for their freedom.

NBC News' Johanna Armstrong and Yanzhou Liu contributed to this report.

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Cathal Mcnaughton / Reuters

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi signs a book at the Nobel Institute after a meeting with the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo on Saturday.

Updated at 8:40 a.m ET: OSLO, Norway -- Myanmar opposition leader and international democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi finally accepted her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Saturday after spending a total of 15 years under house arrest.  

In the speech, Suu Kyi said full political freedom in her country was still a long way off, and talked about the isolation she felt during the years under house arrest. She said the prize had "made me real once again … it had drawn attention to the struggle for democracy in Burma," according to Germany's Deutsche Welle.

Suu Kyi, the Oxford University-educated daughter of General Aung San, Myanmar's assassinated independence hero, also advocated caution about transformation in Myanmar, whose quasi-civilian government continues to hold political prisoners. 

"Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal," Suu Kyi said in her acceptance speech during her first trip to Europe in nearly 25 years. 

"Hostilities have not ceased in the far north; to the west, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before I started out the journey that has brought me here today," she said.

Large crowds welcome Suu Kyi as she travels Thailand during world tour

"There still remain such prisoners in Burma. It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten," Suu Kyi, 66, told a packed Oslo City Hall. 

A day earlier, she arrived from Switzerland to a jubilant reception as dancing and chanting crowds filled Oslo's streets and showered her with flowers. 

Suu Kyi never left Myanmar even during brief periods of freedom after 1989, afraid the military would not let back in. 

Her sons, Kim and Alexander had accepted the Nobel prize on her behalf in 1991, with her husband Michael Aris also attending the ceremony. A year later Suu Kyi announced she would use the $1.3 million prize money to establish a health and education trust for Burmese people. 

She was unable to be with Aris, an Oxford academic, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died in Britain in 1999. 

Earlier, Norwegian government leaders said they have eagerly awaited Saturday's speech at Oslo City Hall since Suu Kyi won the world's highest diplomatic honor in 1991. But Suu Kyi said she never doubted that she would travel one day to Oslo to give her honorific lecture.

"Yes of course, I always believed that. That's why I have always said that the first time I traveled abroad I would come to Norway," she said in answer to a reporter's question. "I never doubted that. Did you?"

Switzerland was the first stop on a planned two-week tour of Europe also taking in Ireland, Britain and France. The journey is her first in Europe since 1988, the year she left her husband and two young sons in England to visit her ill mother back home -- and became the focal point for the country's nascent democracy movement.

Before accepting the prize, a tired-looking, rarely smiling Suu Kyi appeared to be recovering from falling ill on Thursday.

"We are not at the end of the road, by no means, we are just starting out," she said on Friday. 

She both warned that her country's political transformation was not irreversible and the military had to give up its excessive powers and rejected a suggestion that her aim was to dismantle the military. 

"I have never thought that I was doing anything against the military, I've always said I want the military, the army to be an honorable, professional army that is respected by the people," Suu Kyi said at a press conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg on Friday.

Myanmar refugees flee in rickety boats after sectarian clashes

"I fight against what is dangerous for the democratic process and the military having the kind of powers that they shouldn't have certainly endangers the democratic process," said Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi's 17-day European trip has been clouded by sectarian violence between Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Muslim Rohingyas, testing Myanmar's 15-month-old government.

On Friday, a fragile peace held in the wake of days of that has stoked nationalist fervor and displaced 30,000 people and killed 29 by government accounts.

The government has made peace and unity among Myanmar's many ethnic groups its mantra and has struck ceasefire deals with minority Karen, Shan, Mon and Chin rebels, among others, after decades of hostilities.

But there is entrenched, long-standing animosity between Rakhine Buddhists and around 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas, who mostly live in abject conditions and who still do not possess citizenship.

Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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BANGKOK -- Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi stole the show at a regional economic forum here in Bangkok Friday.

It's the first time she's traveled abroad in almost a quarter of a century, and her audience, the good and the great of Asia's business and political world, were hanging on her every word.

"We just want to improve the state of Burma," she said in a speech to the World Economic Forum on East Asia.  "That's what we mean when we say reform."

EPA / Barbara Walton

Aung San Suu Kyi (C) speaks during an event at the World Economic Forum on East Asia in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday.

Her speech was in many ways a reality check, warning against what she called "reckless optimism" over the rapid reforms taking place in Myanmar, also known as Burma. 

The Oxford-educated daughter of Myanmar's slain independence leader added:

"I would not like you to be over-optimistic. I think optimism is good, but cautious optimism. These days I am coming across a lot of what I would call reckless optimism. That is not going to help you. It's not going to help us. So we need a balanced report. A little bit of healthy skepticism I think is in order." 

In Bangkok, she's been given a hero's welcome by Myanmar migrants -- who call her Mother Suu.  More than two million live in Thailand -- workers, refugees and exiles who've escaped the poverty and repression back home, and for whom she had a message of hope -- that conditions would soon be right for them to return.

Even when she wasn't in detention, Suu Kyi, 66, had not left Myanmar since 1988, fearing the ruling generals wouldn't let her back in -- even when her husband was dying in the U.K.

Myanmar's president, who kicked off the reforms by releasing Suu Kyi from house arrest and allowing her to run for parliament, was also invited to this forum, but decided to stay at home --- fearing he's be upstaged.

Suu Kyi receives ecstatic Thailand welcome

Still, the fact Suu Kyi has decided to leave for this visit -- with more planned to Europe -- is in itself a vote of confidence in the reforms.

In Dublin, she'll share a stage with U2 frontman Bono, a staunch Suu Kyi supporter, at a concert in her honor, according to Irish media. In England, she has been given the rare honor of addressing both houses of Parliament. France's Foreign Ministry says she also plans to stop in Paris.

And in Norway she'll deal with some unfinished business -- picking up her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent 15 years under house arrest in Myanmar, won a seat in the country's lower house of parliament on Sunday, her party said.

The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party announced at its headquarters that the campaigner had won in Kawhmu, south of the commercial capital Yangon.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has won. The NLD candidate has taken the Kawhmu constituency," an NLD official announced to cheers from hundreds of supporters, referring to Suu Kyi by her honorific title.

Suu Kyi, who has spent a total of 15 years in detention since 1989, was contesting an election for the first time following her party's decision to end its boycott of a political system dominated by serving or retired military.

The by-elections - only the country's third in half a century - are a crucial test of reforms that could convince the West to end sanctions and its pariah image.

The United States and European Union have hinted that some sanctions - imposed over the past two decades in response to human rights abuses - may be lifted if the election is free and fair, unleashing a wave of investment in the impoverished but resource-rich country bordering rising powers India and China.

The charismatic and wildly popular Suu Kyi, complained last week of "irregularities", though none significant enough to derail her party's bid for 44 of the 45 available by-election seats.

The BBC reported that the NLD has taken no part in the country's political process since 1990, when it won a landslide victory in a general election but the military refused to accept the result.

From dawn, voters quietly filed into makeshift polling stations at schools, religious centres and community buildings, some gushing with excitement after casting ballots for the frail Suu Kyi, or "Aunty Suu" as she is affectionately known.

"My whole family voted for her and I am sure all relatives and friends of us will vote for her too," said Naw Ohn Kyi, 59, a farmer from Warthinkha.

In Suu Kyi's rustic constituency of bamboo-thatched homes in Kawhmu, south of the biggest city Yangon, she looked poised for a landslide win. "So far as my friends and I have checked, almost everyone we asked voted for Aunty Suu," said Ko Myint Aung, 27-year shop owner from Kawhmu.

Ko Myint Aung was one of 15 constituents contacted by Reuters, who all said they had voted for Suu Kyi.

To be regarded as credible, the vote needs the blessing of Suu Kyi, who was freed from house arrest in November 2010, six days after a widely criticised general election that paved the way for the end of 49 years of direct army rule and the opening of a parliament stacked with retired and serving military.

President Thein Sein, a general in the former military junta, has surprised the world with the most dramatic political reforms since the military took power in a 1962 coup in the former British colony then known as Burma.

In the span of a year, the government has freed hundreds of political prisoners, held peace talks with ethnic rebels, relaxed strict media censorship, allowed trade unions, and showed signs of pulling back from the powerful economic and political orbit of its giant neighbor China.

It was rewarded last November when Hillary Clinton made the first visit to the country by a U.S. secretary of state since 1955. Business executives, mostly from Asia but many from Europe, have swarmed to Yangon in recent weeks to hunt for investment opportunities in the country of 60 million people, one of the last frontier markets in Asia.

Voting stations opened at 6 a.m. (2330 GMT), some under the watch of small numbers of observers from the European Union and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), who were given only a few days to prepare inside Myanmar. Some said they considered themselves "election watchers" rather than observers.

The last election, in November 2010, was widely seen as rigged to favour the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the biggest in parliament. The NLD boycotted the vote.

"The day isn't over yet, but perhaps this is the first really authentic election held in this country for some time," said Robert Cooper, a long-time friend of Suu Kyi and counselor to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

"The pace of change has been breathtaking," he told Reuters while touring polling stations north of Yangon.

But the election has not gone smoothly. Suu Kyi has suffered from ill health and accused rivals of vandalising NLD posters, padding electoral registers and "many cases of intimidation."

Some of these infractions, however, have been quite minor and are typical of elections across Southeast Asia, where vote-buying and even assassinations are commonplace.

The NLD on Friday said a betel nut had been fired by catapult at one of its candidates and a stack of hay had been set on fire close to where another was due to give a speech.

It made fresh claims of irregularities on Sunday and said some ballots papers had been covered in wax to make it tricky to write on. It accused the USDP of waiting outside some polling stations and telling voters to back their party.

Sceptics in the democracy movement say Suu Kyi is working too closely with a government stacked with the same former generals who persecuted dissidents, fearing she is being exploited to convince the West to end sanctions and make the legislature appear effective. Others have almost impossibly high hopes for her to accelerate reforms once she enters parliament.

Some U.S. restrictions such as visa bans and asset freezes could be lifted quickly if the election goes smoothly, diplomats say, while the EU may end its ban on investment in timber and the mining of gemstones and metals.

Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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