Zohra Ben Lakhdar, author of this month's essay, is director of the Laboratory of Atomic-Molecular Spectroscopy and Applications at Tunis El Manar University, in Tunisia. From her primary-school days onward, she has had to battle political, social, and cultural obstacles as she muscled toward her lifelong goal of becoming a scientist. She was elected to the Islamic Academy of Science in 1994 and was recently named a winner of the 2005 L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.