Rita Levi-Montalcini is recognized for her pioneering research on nerve cell growth. During the 1950s she discovered a protein in the nervous system, which she named the nerve growth factor (NGF). Her subsequent collaboration with biochemist Stanley Cohen at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, led to the isolation of that substance. Later applications of their work have proven useful in the study of several disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and birth defects. Levi-Montalcini's and Cohen's work was recognized in 1986 when they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. Levi-Montalcini became the fourth woman to receive the Nobel in that field.

Levi-Montalcini, the third of four children of Adamo Levi and Adele Montalcini, was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Turin, Italy, in 1909. She grew up in a traditional family and was steered by her father to pursue an education at an all-girls' high...