At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin.

It's not enough what I did in the past - there is also the future.

My experience in childhood and adolescence of the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men had convinced me that I was not cut out to be a wife.

The instruments, glassware, and chemical reagents necessary for my project were the same as my 19th-century predecessors had.

You've been thinking about something without willing to for a long time...Then, all of a sudden, the problem is opened to you in a flash and you suddenly see the answer.

At 100, I have a mind that is superior - thanks to experience - than when I was 20.

After a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom.