Mario Capecchi’s life is one of those stories that requires you to look at various sources to see if this is really true or not, the most disconcerting thing this genius has experienced is the perception that chance plays for or against us in a whimsical and capricious way. incomprehensible way.
Mario Capecchi was born in Verona, Italy, on October 6, 1937, he was reportedly destined to be a happy child. There was a clear way to succeed.
- His father.
- Luciano Capecchi.
- Was a successful aviator; his mother.
- Lucy Ramberg.
- Was of American descent and came from a family of artists with good financial resources.
“The world breaks everyone, then many become stronger in broken places. “Ernest Hemingway.
Her father traveled all over the world and so she met Lucy, the two fell 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 “Los bohemians”, and was also a professor of poetry at the Sorbonne. The future seemed to have only happiness for them.
The Capecchi did not expect fascism to begin gaining ground in Italy, but the drums of war became a daily rumble. Mario Capecchi’s mother, Lucy, has launched a more or less clandestine campaign against fascism. He founded a newspaper and strongly opposed the so-called “racial laws. “Mussolini.
Clashes began and Mario Capecchi’s father was called to serve, who departed 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 might have problems with the authorities, so, fearing the worst, he handed money over to the bolzano peasants to take care of his son in case his wife was arrested.
Unsurprisingly, in 1941 the Gestapo arrested Lucy Ramberg and 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 conflicting versions. Some say they abused the child and decided to run away, others say the money runs out and then they decided to turn him in, the truth is that Mario Capecchi stayed on the street when he was only 4 years old.
Mario Capecchi doesn’t have a clear memory of what happened at the time, he just knows that he suddenly found himself alone and helpless on the street.
He began wandering the road and encountered several groups of children in a similar situation, had no adults able to care for them and were forced to survive as they could.
These bands of children stole food and slept on the street or anywhere else where they found shelter, they were only afraid to survive another day. They had no idea what the future would be like, they simply faced adversity with their survival instinct.
Mario Capecchi continued his life on the street for five years, and at 8 became suddenly ill. You have no idea what happened. Chances are he passed out on the street and a good Samaritan decided to help him.
One way or another, he arrived at the hospital, had typhoid fever and was cared for by doctors.
The war was over and Mario Capecchi had no strength to escape the hospital, as was the case every time an institution “adopted” him. This had already happened several times. At the time, the disease barely allowed him to move.
One day, a woman approached her bed and barely recognized her. She was your mother. He had survived the concentration camp and had been looking for him for 18 months, it was a miracle she found him.
She was very physically and mentally changed, but the reunion was happy, they both went to the United States and there they began a new life, 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 began an experiment with rats, separated one gene from his DNA and exchanged it for another.
In 2007 he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies. A woman named Marlene Bonelli, who lived in Austria, recognized the surname when she was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Mario Capecchi had no idea, but she was his half-sister, daughter of the same mother, found a way to communicate with him and, a year later, the two met again, once again chance played in his favor.