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Article: Utah's Nobel Prize winner
- Article from:
- Deseret News (Salt Lake City)
- Article date:
- October 9, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Mario Capecchi, the University of Utah's first Nobel Prize
winner, is an example of how good things can blossom under the most
hopeless of circumstances.
By now, news reports have circulated about his desperate
childhood. He was born in Italy to a mother who wrote poems and
pamphlets that attacked fascism and Nazism. By the age of 4, he
found himself homeless, wandering the streets at a time of war and
extreme poverty. By the end of the war, at the age of 9, he was
confined to a hospital, suffering from malnutrition. His mother, who
somehow survived years at Dachau, found him there.
At that point in his life, Capecchi never had been to school. He
couldn't read, and he had suffered the kind ...