Mario Capecchi’s Life, From The Streets To The Nobel Prize In Medicine

Mario Capecchi’s life is one of those stories that force you to consult several sources to see if it really is true or not. Most disconcerting of all this genius experienced is the realization that chance plays for or against us in a capricious and incomprehensible way.

Mario Capecchi was born in Verona, Italy, on October 6, 1937. Apparently, he was destined to be a happy child. A clear path to success lay ahead.

His father, Luciano Capecchi, was a successful aviator. His mother, Lucy Ramberg, was of American origin and came from a wealthy artistic family.

The father traveled all over the world and that’s how he met Lucy. The two fell madly in love, and she decided to follow him to Italy and start a life with him.

She formed a group of artists in Europe called “The Bohemians”, and was also a professor of poetry at the Sorbonne. The future seemed to hold only happiness for them.

The Rise of Fascism

The Capecchi did not expect fascism to begin to take hold in Italy, but the drums of war turned into a daily hammering. Lucy, the mother of Mario Capecchi, started a more or less clandestine campaign against fascism. He founded a newspaper and resolutely opposed Mussolini’s so-called “racial laws”.

Fighting broke out and Mario Capecchi’s father was called to serve. He was supposed to leave for Africa to join an anti-aircraft artillery unit.

Before he left, he feared for his family. He knew that, at any moment, his wife could get into trouble with the authorities. Fearing the worst, he gave money to some peasants in Bolzano to take care of his son if his wife was arrested. They accepted.

As predicted, in 1941 the Gestapo arrested Lucy Ramberg. They sent her to the Dachau concentration camp. Little Mario was only 3 years old. The peasants took care of him.

At this point, there are contradictory versions. Some say that they mistreated the boy and that he decided to run away. Others say the money just ran out and so decided to give it up. The truth is that Mario Capecchi was left on the streets when he was just 4 years old.

Mario Capecchi, a genius on the streets

Mario Capecchi has no clear memories of what happened back then. He only knows that, suddenly, he found himself alone and helpless on the streets.

He started wandering along the road and found several groups of children who were in a similar situation. There were no adults who could take care of them and they were forced to survive as they could.

These bands of children stole food and slept in the streets or wherever they could find shelter. They just worried about surviving another day. They had no idea of ​​the future. They simply faced adversity with their survival instinct.

Mario Capecchi continued his life on the streets for five years. When he turned 8 years old, he suddenly became ill. He has no idea what happened. Most likely, he passed out in the street and some good Samaritan decided to help him.

One way or another, he arrived at a hospital. He had typhoid fever and was seen by doctors.

The labyrinths of destiny in the life of Mario Capecchi

The war had already ended and Mario Capecchi did not have the strength to flee the hospital, as he used to do whenever some institution “adopted him”. This had already happened several times. At that time, the disease barely allowed him to move.

One day, a woman approached his bed. He barely recognized her. It was his mother. He had survived the concentration camp and had been looking for him for 18 months. It was a miracle she had found him.

She was very changed, both physically and in mind, but the reunion was a happy one. The two left for the United States and started a new life there. Capecchi decided to study medicine. He was a brilliant student.

In the early 1980s, against the wishes of researchers at the National Institute of Health, he started an experiment with rats. You separated one gene from their DNA and swapped it for another.

In 2007, he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine along with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies. A woman named Marlene Bonelli, who lived in Austria, recognized the last name when he received the Nobel.

Mario Capecchi had no idea, but she was his half-sister, daughter of the same mother. She found a way to communicate with him, and a year later the two were reunited. Once again, chance played in his favor.