During World War Two, Italian scientist Dr Rita Levi-Montalcini was forced to do experiments in her bedroom after being banned from universities because she was Jewish.

Her experiments in that bedroom laboratory on chicken embryos led to the discovery of nerve cell death.

Whilst working in the United States after the war, she worked out that a protein factor was required for the growth of our nerves. A discovery which won her the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1986.

Her work improved our understanding of the nervous system and has allowed scientists to potentially battle degenerative diseases such as dementia.

Produced and presented by Tim O’Callaghan, using archive interviews from the Nobel Prize Institute, the Society for Neuroscience and the BBC Archives.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: Dr Rita Levi-Montalcini in 1950. Mondadori via Getty Images)