Rita Levi-Montalcini revealed a fundamental process for cell growth and differentiation by discovering the hormone-like protein nerve growth factor (NGF). For this work, she received part of the 1986 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, Italy, where her father was an electrical engineer and mathematician and her mother an artist. Despite the objections of her father, who did not approve of education for women, she earned two medical degrees in 1936 and 1940 from the University of Turin, specializing in neurology and psychiatry. She was particularly interested in embryo nervous systems, inspired by an article on limb growth in chick embryos published in 1934 by the nerve development specialist Viktor Hamburger. During World War II Levi-Montalcini, who is Jewish, lived and worked underground to avoid the Italian government's anti-Semitic practices, developing a theory that many immature nerve cells are normally programmed to die. After Italy was...