The good Nobels

Mario R. Capecchi's earliest memories are of his mother being arrested by the Nazis.

In 1941, Capecchi, then a young boy living in the Italian Alps, saw the Gestapo haul away his mother, a poet who had allied herself with anti-Fascist intellectuals. The arrest was the start of a remarkable journey for Capecchi, one that included being a homeless street urchin, suffering from malnutrition in an Italian hospital, immigrating to the United States -- and yesterday, winning the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Capecchi, 70, a renowned geneticist at the University of Utah at Salt Lake City, shares the prestigious $1.54 million prize with fellow American Oliver Smithies, 82, a native of England now at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Sir Martin J. Evans, 66, of Cardiff University in Wales.