“If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize,” wrote pioneering neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with biochemist Stanley Cohen, Ph.D.

In 1952, Levi-Montalcini had made the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF), a protein that causes developing cells to grow by stimulating surrounding nerve tissue. In related research, Cohen had discovered epidermal growth factor, which stimulates the proliferation of epithelial cells.