As a woman growing up in early 20th-century Italy, Rita Levi-Montalcini was expected to marry, not pursue an education. Against the objections of her father, she attended Turin School of Medicine, graduating with honors as an M.D. But her hopes of an academic position vanished with the fascist Italian government's persecution of the Jews in the late 1930s and early 1940s. At the risk of her own life, Levi-Montalcini continued studying how the body s nervous system develops and discovered the nerve growth factor, a protein that controls the growth of neurons and is required for their survival. Building upon her findings, she and a host of other researchers unearthed a whole class of compounds that are intimately involved in every stage of a cell s or an organism s life, from conception to death. Today, scientists are still exploring the implications of her work, from cancer treatments to Alzheimer s disease management to research on birth defects, and more. As Rita Levi-Montalcini shows, this woman's incredible persistence and faith in herself allowed her to persevere through tough opposition and earn a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986.