Books and Careers
I do not know the name, but I remember getting a book at about age 13 from the local library that discussed how light was emitted or absorbed because an electron transitioned from one level to the number. As a science fair project, I even tried to make an electroluminescent lamp. I did not think much of it for several years, but in graduate school I gravitated toward a lab where we fired ions at gaseous atoms and studied how the collisions excited either the ion or atom.
I have not done that work since graduate school, but I am very interested in science as I was before I grabbed the book.
On that topic, I can easily see why someone named Nancy might be influenced by a book called Nurse Nancy. But I have a hard time believing there wasn't some previous predilection at work.
In my case I ended up in science (as did EmmettRedd). I already had an interest motivated by my uncle, who lived next door. He was a high school mad-scientist type. Showed me the Moon through a telescope he built (including grinding his own mirror). That was around age 7-8. I like to say I was "hooked on photonics." 
A few years later I discovered the Tom Swift series, and the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series. Pretty sure they're both now out of print. I ended up first in the Air Force working with computers (still main-frames at the time) and later studied science in college. Those books were a definite influence, but the predilection was already there. I'm not sure if what is known as a work of fiction could influence a career all by itself. No idea what the psychologists would say about that.