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Mario Capecchi: The man who changed our world The genetics research that won Mario Capecchi a share of this year's Nobel Prize for medicine may well help to define the science of the 21st century. But the man himself was marked, in extraordinary ways, by the turbulent(动荡的) history of the century before. Mr Capecchi's grandfather, a German archaeologist, was accidentally gunned down by his own men during the First World War. His father, an Italian aviator, was killed in the Second World War. He himself spent that war poor in northern Italy after his American mother was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp-a survival tale all the more remarkable for the fact that he was just four years old when his mother was taken away. One might imagine, after a start like that, that he would develop into an artist-one thinks of Roman Polanski, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto-or a politician. Indeed, Mr Capecchi first intended to study political science when, at length, he got around to a university education. But with his quiet manner and clever mind, he rose to the top of his chosen field in the medical sciences.