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. The trio won the award for research on how genes can be manipulated in mice to better understand disease in humans.

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