1. Mario Ramberg Capecchi was born on 6 October 1937 and is an Italian-born molecular geneticist and a co-awardee 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.
Mario Capecchi shared the prize with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies.
Mario Capecchi 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 and Lucy Ramberg, an Italian-born daughter of American-born Impressionist painter Lucy Dodd Ramberg and German archaeologist Walter Ramberg.
However, it was not long before Mario ended up on the streets of Bolzano.
In July 1942, a few months before his fifth birthday, Italian records suggest he was reunited with his father in Reggio Emilia, which Mario Capecchi did confirm but stated that he stayed with his father for only for a few brief periods and that he mostly lived on the streets until he was placed in an orphanage towards the end of the war.
Mario Capecchi's mother survived the war in Germany, and when it ended she began a year-long search for him.
Mario Capecchi finally found him on his ninth birthday in a hospital bed in Reggio Emilia ill with a fever and subsisting on a daily bowl of chicory coffee and bread crust.
Mario Capecchi took him to Rome, where he had his first bath since he had left her care and where, with money sent by his uncle, Edward Ramberg, an American physicist at RCA, they made arrangements to depart to the United States.
Mario Capecchi graduated from George School, a Quaker boarding school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1956.
Mario Capecchi received his Bachelor of Science in chemistry and physics in 1961 from Antioch College in Ohio.
Mario Capecchi came to MIT as a graduate student intending to study physics and mathematics, but during the course of his studies, he became interested in molecular biology.
Mario Capecchi subsequently transferred to Harvard to join the lab of James D Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.
Mario Capecchi received his PhD in biophysics in 1967 from Harvard University, with his doctoral thesis completed under the tutelage of Watson.
Mario Capecchi was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University from 1967 to 1969.
Since 1988 Mario Capecchi has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Mario Capecchi is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Mario Capecchi has given a talk for Duke University's Program in Genetics and Genomics as part of their Distinguished Lecturer Series.
In May 2008, Mario Capecchi met with Bonelli, then 69, in northern Italy, and confirmed that she was his sister.
Mario Capecchi was awarded the Nobel prize for creating a knockout mouse.
Mario Capecchi has pursued a systematic analysis of the mouse Hox gene family.