Nobel Prize Winner Mario Capecchi Was Once Homeless

Nobel laureate Mario Capecchi has lived a fantastic life. His story is one that makes one look at different sources to find out if it is really true.

The craziest thing about his situation is that the tour seemed to be absent and on his side at the same time.

Mario Capecchi was born in Verona, Italy, on October 6, 1937.  His destiny was to become a happy child  and his path to success was crystal clear.

Mario’s father Luciano was a successful aviator and his mother Lucy Ramberg was of American descent and came from a family of artists with good finances.

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

She formed a group of artists in Europe called the “Bohemians” and also taught poetry at La Sorbonne. The future seemed bright and prosperous for the whole family.

The rise of fascism

The Capecchi family did not expect fascism to make a breakthrough in Italy, but it did. Suddenly the drums began to beat.

Mario’s mother Lucy began a more or less secretive struggle against fascism by founding a newspaper and opposing Mussolini’s so – called “racial laws”.

Fighting broke out and Mario Capecchi’s father was called in. He had to travel to Africa to join an artillery unit focusing on air threats.

However, the father worried about his family and knew that his wife could have problems with the authorities at any time. He feared the worst and paid some farmers to take care of Mario in case his mother was arrested.

In 1941, the Gestapo arrested Lucy Ramberg and sent her to the Dachau concentration camp. Mario was then only three years old,  but fortunately the farmers took care of him as promised.

From this point, the versions of what happened differ. Some say that Mario was treated badly and therefore decided to flee; others say they ran out of money and abandoned him.

In any case, Mario Capecchi ended up on the street when he was only four years old.

Mario Capecchi – a genius on the street

Mario Capecchi has no clear memories of what happened during this time. The only thing he remembers is that he was alone and helpless on the street.

He started wandering around and found several groups of children who were in a similar situation. They had no adults to take care of them and were forced to survive on their own.

This group of children stole food and slept on the streets  or where they found shelter. Their only thought was to survive the day – the future did not exist. Their survival instincts were the only thing they could trust.

Mario Capecchi was homeless for five years. When he turned eight, he suddenly became ill. He does not know what really happened. One day he fainted in the street, whereupon someone found and decided to help him.

One way or another, he ended up in the hospital and found out that he had typhoid fever.

Nobel laureate Mario Capecchi

The war was over and Mario Capecchi was not stable enough to escape from the hospital, which was what he used to do as soon as an institution “adopted” him.

He had fled several times before, but the disease made him too weak to do so this time.

One day a woman approached his bed. He barely recognized her, but it turned out to be his mother. Surprisingly, she had survived the concentration camp and  had been looking for him for 18 months.

The fact that she managed to find him is a miracle. She what very changed, both physically and mentally, but it was a heartwarming reunion.

The two traveled to the United States to begin a new life. Capecchi decided to study medicine and was a brilliant student.

In the early 1980s, he began an experiment with mice, contrary to what the National Institutes of Health wanted. He took one gene from their DNA and replaced it with another.

In 2007, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine together with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies. A woman living in Austria named Marlene Bonelli recognized his name.

The new Nobel Prize winner Mario Capecchi did not know, but he had a half-sister with the same mother as him. She tried to establish contact with him and a year later they met.

Once again, fate was on his side.