In the dying days of the second world war, the great Erwin Schrodinger published a book- a collection of lectures. In this book, he conjectured on how chemistry and physics could be used to answer the question- "What is life?" In the aftermath of the war, this book became a call to arms, for a number of physicists who had turned away from physics- distraught at the weapons they had wrought. Thus was born molecular biology. To me, they were heroes.
For those of us who have lived in a time of peace, the tales of these scientists, who lived in extraordinary times, were of an epic nature.Its not just that they were great scientists who laid the foundation of the current revolution in biology,but that their life stories bestow upon them the aura of myth and legend.
Today, I heard an extraordinary tale in the same vein- albeit of a boy who, during the war, walked barefoot down Italy's boot and has built some of the most powerful tools in understanding how mammals(mice, humans) develop from a single cell to an adult, how they fall sick, grow old and die.
Mario Capecchi (pronounce Kapeki) was invited to talk at Cornell today. It was meant to be a popular talk and not a science talk. To me, it was one of the most amazing stories I have ever heard. Mario Capecchi was born to an Italian-American mother in 1937 in Verona. His father died during the war in North Africa, fighting for Il Duce. His mother was part of an anti-fascist grouping and knew that her time alive and free was limited. So ,she gave her daughter up for adoption to a French family. She sold the rest of her belongings and gave it to an Italian family so that they would look after the four year old Mario if anything happened to her. Sure enough, she was dragged away by the GESTAPO to the concentration camp at Dachau. A year after she was arrested, Mario Capecchi was thrown out of the house he had sanctuary in. He was five years old and it was 1941! for the next four years of the war, he wandered his way south, alternating between orphanages of unlimited horror, chicory and dry bread crust and the streets where he along with other orphaned children stole food from the carts. Eventually, he was "held" at a hospital, bereft of his clothes, so that he wouldnt run away . In 1946, on his birthday, his mother, who he described as having a gift for the dramatic, arrived to take him away. She had survived the concentration camp and had spent a year searching for him. There really must be miracles. The story was reminiscent of the climax of the movie "Life is beautiful".
In 1946, Mario Capechhi was brought by his mother to the United states. He apparently waited to see if what the rest of impoverished Europe thought of the US was true. In a voice filled with emotion, he declared "People in Europe thought that the streets in the US was paved with gold. I found more, I found opportunity!" He grew up in a large Quaker commune and seemed to be deeply influenced by them.
Mario Capechhi obtained his PhD under James Watson and went onto join Harvard medical school as a professor. He described Harvard as a university where "you are asked every day as to what new thing did you find today?" He believed that this curtailed the kind of research of fundamental importance and encouraged trivial pursuits. He also noticed that while Harvard had many brilliant scientists , they failed to work in synergy and were constantly in apposition to each other. This perhaps conflicted with his Quaker upbringing. So, at his first opportunity, he moved to Utah State University- a move tantamount to academic suicide for many!
By the early 1990's the techniques invented by Mario Capechhi's lab, in collaboration with two other labs had made the manipulation of the mouse genome a routine technique. Their work has been foundational and has made possible several thousand research break throughs in recent years. In recognition of this, he won the Nobel prize for physiology in 2007. After the Nobel prize ceremony, he met a lady who turned out to be his sister, the same sister who had been given away for adoption in 1937!
I worked with mice for three years. Mario Capecchi wrote the lab manual that we all used and did many an experiment which we cited. His name was always deep within my head. I had always greatly admired his work. I always wondered what prompted him to move from Harvard to Utah. I always wanted to know who he really was. Capecchi the man was on display today. Mario Capecchi is in my pantheon of heroes.
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