In two days time Rita Levi Montalcini will become the first centenarian Nobel laureate. A week of celebrations began today with the biggie; the President of the Italian republic, Giorgio Napolitano, received her in his residence, the Quirinale, a seventeenth century baroque palace in the heart of Rome.

An entourage of 80 or so guests, including myself, attended in one of the Quirinale’s most lovely rooms – frescoed, golden-and-scarlet, dripping with putti and guarded in all corners by the ceremonially dressed corazzieri, the President’s special corps.

Rita’s entrance moistened the eyes of the more sensitive in the audience, including myself. Entering regally on the President’s arm, awash in blue silks, she turned her head upwards and towards us with a long, sweet smile. Behind the pair came the guests of honour, a long and impressive roll call of the famous, from former prime minister (and former head of the European Commission) Romano Prodi to physics Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia.

There were three short addresses. The first, from Lamberto Maffei, vice-president of the Accademia dei Lincei, briefly summarised her own – by now much-told – personal history and achievements.

Napolitano, no spring chicken himself at 84, spoke eloquently of her value to Italy and called on the government to support Rita’s two contemporary projects – the European Brain Research Institute which she founded in Rome and which is now foundering for lack of funds, and her Rita Levi Montalcini Foundation which supports the education of African women.

Rita’s own address astonished with its power. One hundred years old, leaning only on the lectern for support, she turned out a perfectly timed, perfectly structured speech worthy of Obama on a good day. Without notes, she spoke of how honoured she felt to have been able to work and live so long, elegantly paying homage to those who have worked with her and those who will follow her footsteps in the future. She ended – at an emotional peak as controlled as any delivered by a professional politician – with a repeat of Napolitano’s appeal to the government. Tumultuous applause. Notably absent, however, was a representative of the government – which has so far shown an unhealthy lack of interest in basic science.

The pair move on to the second reception room, adjacent, for prosecco and up-scale finger-food. They are followed by a swarm of cameras and journalists. Passing the corazziere positioned between the two rooms, Rita demonstrates the magnificent diversity of the human form. She barely reaches 150 cm; corazzieri are required to be over 190 cm. Those corazzieri in attendance are in their full regalia. With their knee length boots, metal breast plates (the ‘corazze’ from which the corps gets its name) and golden helmets with the dangling horse tail, they look particularly domineering.

The second room shines with light from Murano glass chandeliers reflected again and again in the vast gilded mirrors which bedeck the walls. Napolitano and Levi Montalcini separate and prepare to individually ‘meet’ each of those attending. Awaiting my turn, I bump shoulders with Ignazio Marino, a senator in the opposition PD party. Marino is a heart surgeon and has made the fate of science in Italy his main cause. “She gave a lunch the other day to which I was invited,” he confides enthusiastically. “It was great; she was brimming over with ideas; she will live another hundred years.” CNR president Luciano Maiani seems less upbeat. He wears the deeply worried look that now permanently shadows his face. It isn’t easy heading a major research organisation in Italy right now. Telling me of the work CNR scientists were doing to help the reconstruction of L’Aquila – and to save its art treasures – after the earthquake, his spirits do not appear to lift.

I asked Napolitano if he thought his voice could help science. “I’m not as powerful as you think”, he replied with a rueful laugh. I began to worry for Rita. She had by this time been standing for an hour, constantly bustled by those wanting to congratulate her, and be photographed with her. But far from being overwhelmed, she seemed to be in her element, responding to everyone warmly and brightly. When I finally got to shake her hand, I found it warm and firm.

Alison Abbott