Rita Arditti was born  into a Sephardic Jewish family in Buenos Aires in 1934. She earned a doctorate in biology at the University of Rome, did laboratory science for more than a decade in Italy and the U.S., and ultimately spent the last 30 years of her career teaching doctoral students in an interdisciplinary program at The Union Institute and University. Always an activist, she co-founded three political projects–Science for the People, New Words Bookstore, and the Women’s Community Cancer Project. She wrote Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (University of California Press, 1999) and co-edited two other books: Science and Liberation, with Pat Brennan and Steve Cavrak (South End Press, 1980); and Test Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood? with Renate Klein and Shelley Minden (Pandora/Routledge, 1984). Rita had one son, Federico Muchnik, with her ex-husband Mario Muchnik. In 1980 she met Estelle Disch and they were partners for the rest of Rita’s life. Rita died in 2009 after living with metastatic breast cancer for over 30 years.