Kurt Hagblom, Firma Hagblom-Foto, restored by Adam Cuerden · Public domain

Barred from academic work by Mussolini's racial laws, she built a laboratory in her bedroom from sewing needles and watchmaker's forceps and kept going through the war. The nerve growth factor she discovered there explained how the nervous system knows what to build. Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1986; she worked until she was 103.