The Associated Press in Salt Lake City, Utah, has been carrying the news that the city’s most famous scientific resident, Mario Capecchi, was reunited with his half-sister after more than six decades apart.

Capecchi, of the University of Utah, shared last year’s Nobel prize for physiology or medicine for his contribution to the development of designer ‘knock-out’ mice. News of the award made television in Austria, where Marlene Bonelli was watching at home. She saw a face that seemed familiar, the face of a brother she thought had died in World War II. She consequently read Capecchi’s life story in ‘Dolomiten’, her local newspaper, and was certain the famous scientist was her older brother.

Bonelli then contacted the newspaper, which sent photographs of her to Capecchi in Utah. “Looking at the pictures it was obviously my sister,” Capecchi said, noting her resemblance to his mother. The siblings separated by a war were finally reunited on May 23 — but had to communicate through an interpreter. “She doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak German and neither of us speaks Italian, although I can get away with it in a restaurant,” Capecchi said. A video of their reunion is available here.

Their mother, Lucy Ramberg, was an anti-fascist activist in the years leading up to the war. “In 1939 the Germans were already keeping track of my mother. The Italians jailed her and she knew she couldn’t keep the child,” said Capecchi. He was 2 when Marlene was handed over to friends in Austria. Capecchi himself endured a hard-knock life; his mother sent him to live with a poor family with what little money she could make from selling her possessions. When the money ran out, he was sent to live with his abusive father who abandoned him soon afterwards. A young Capecchi, not much older than four, was left to fend for himself on the streets of Bologna, scrounging for food to survive.

Following her release after the war, Ramberg found Capecchi on his ninth birthday in a hospital suffering from typhoid and malnutrition. They then set off on a journey that would see them arrive in the US to a new life, a life for Capecchi that would entail a brilliant scientific career.

Posted on behalf of Tony Scully

Image credit: Howard Hughes Medical Institute