Mario Capecchi

Mario Ramberg Capecchi is an Italianborn American molecular geneticist and a cowinner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a method to create mice in which a specific gene is turned off, known as knockout mice. He shared the prize with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and Biology at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Mario Capecchi was born in Verona, Italy, as the only child of Luciano Capecchi, an Italian airman who would be later reported as missing in action while manning an antiaircraft gun in the Western Desert Campaign, and Lucy Ramberg, an Americanborn daughter of Impressionist painter Lucy Dodd Ramberg and German archaeologist Walter Ramberg. During World War II, his mother was sent to the Dachau concentration camp as punishment for pamphleteering and belonging to an antiFascist group. Prior to her arrest she had made contingency plans by selling her belongings and giving the proceeds to a peasant family near Bolzano to provide housing for her only child. However, after one year, the money was exhausted and the family was unable to care for him. At fourandahalf years old he was left to fend for himself, living as a street child on the streets of northern Italy for the next four years, living in various orphanages and roving through towns with groups of other homeless children.

Source: Wikipedia