Nikola Tesla
Tesla, who loved science, was afraid that after his brother's accidental death he would have to continue the family tradition and become a priest.  After he graduated from a prestigious High School in Karlovac, Croatia, he went back to Gospic during summer to see his family and almost died of cholera. He asked his father if he could go study engineering if by miracle he survived, and the father promised his dying son to send him to the best school in the whole world.  Nikola's health improved quickly and his father sent him to study at the Technical College in Graz, Austria, in 1875.