| 查看: 1318 | 回复: 16 | |||
[交流]
【Discussion】Mario Capecchi, a Nobel Warrior! What makes him so special? Do you
|
|||
|
Question:What makes him so special? Do you admire him? There are 50 coins for encouraging the guys who join in this discussion actively. Please don't just say "support or thanks" . Give your opinion on the question. (Essay link)http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1670524,00.html Mario Capecchi, a Nobel Warrior! Is the remarkable life of one of this year’s laureates a triumph of nature or nurture? By NANCY GIBBS All three winners of this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine are eminent scientists, but Mario Capecchi is the one with the spiral-staircase story: the starving, homeless Italian street kid who found his way to America, to Harvard, to Utah, ever the refugee, before finally arriving at eternal glory and the Nobel Prize. It's in many ways a familiar tale, Oliver Twist meets Albert Einstein, the pilgrim who comes to the promised land expecting, as he says, "the roads to be paved in gold. What I found actually was just opportunity." But his story also has enough nice serrated edges to challenge our theories about genes and genius and what really makes us who we are. You could say the visionary geneticist had a clear genetic edge. Capecchi's grandmother was a painter, his uncle a renowned physicist, and his mother Lucy Ramberg an expat American poet living in a chalet in the Italian Alps when Mario was born in 1937. She had fallen in with a group of bohemian writers who believed, her son says with just a trace of bemusement, that "they could wipe out Fascism and Nazism with a pen." After the Gestapo came in 1941 to take her to Dachau, Mario landed on the streets. He was 4 years old. All children have their own normal; they have not yet seen any worlds other than their own. Capecchi's world was an uncontrolled experiment in resilience. "I never felt sorry for myself," he recalls. "Children are remarkably adaptable. Put them in a situation, and they simply will do whatever it is they need to do." For his band of urchins, that meant a cunning, methodical pursuit of food and shelter. They worked together like raptors, one child distracting the street vendor so another could steal the fruit. Capecchi finally landed in a hospital in Reggio Emilia, where he could starve more systematically. The daily ration was a piece of bread and some chicory coffee, and to keep the children from running off, "they took all of our clothes away." He lay on a bed with no sheets, no blankets, feverish with hunger. It was there he learned the art of patient plotting as he imagined all the ways he might escape and the obstacles he'd face to do so. In 1945, when American soldiers liberated Dachau, Lucy went hunting for her son. She scoured hospital records, searching for more than a year before she tracked him down. It was on his 9th birthday, Oct. 6, 1946, that the mother he scarcely recognized arrived, a new Tyrolean outfit in hand, including the hat with the feather. She took him to Rome, where he had his first bath in six years, and ultimately to the New World, where they settled in a Quaker commune outside Philadelphia. Creativity, Capecchi once said, comes from "the abrasive juxtaposition" of life experiences. His old life and new one certainly rubbed each other raw. Some teachers wrote off the feral boy who had never set foot in a school and spoke no English; but others gave him paints and told him to make murals to communicate. One day he was beating up the other third-graders, since that was what he knew how to do. And soon he was beating up older kids on behalf of his peers. "That gave me a position," he says, "some social standing." Capecchi ultimately found his way to Harvard, the center of the universe in the early days of molecular biology. But he felt crowded by colleagues whose rivalries consumed them as much as their research. So he set off for the University of Utah, where the sight lines suited him better and collegiality was the key to success. He lives in a house high over a canyon. "I love looking across long distances," he says. "I think it sort of opens up my mind." This vista is necessary for his work as well as his soul. Capecchi looks at science as a series of circles: the smallest circle is the one in which everyone is doing the same thing. As you move farther out, "fewer people are willing to go there, but you're charting new areas. Go too far, step out of bounds, and you're in science fiction. So you have to be careful. But you want to be as close to the edge as possible." When he first proposed manipulating mouse genes to help model disease, the nih gatekeepers thought he was over the line. "Not worthy of pursuit," they said of his grant proposals. Happily, Capecchi ignored them. Of course the edge looks different to him, since he has lived on it. It's a cliché that strength comes from adversity. But clichés are often just hard truths tamed by familiarity. Maybe he triumphed in spite of his ordeals, not because of them. There is no control group, he observes, that lets you measure what you missed. In raising his own daughter, he felt the pull to protect her, even as he wondered at the cost. "Maybe a few hard knocks ..." but his voice trails off. He didn't want to experiment on her. [ Last edited by shmily505 on 2010-11-27 at 17:02 ] |
回复此楼» 猜你喜欢
交叉科学部支持青年基金，对三无青椒是个机会吗？
已经有4人回复
-
招博士
已经有6人回复
-
限项规定
已经有8人回复
-
国家基金申请书模板内插入图片不可调整大小?
已经有5人回复
-
国家级人才课题组招收2026年入学博士
已经有5人回复
-
Fe3O4@SiO2合成
已经有6人回复
-
青年基金C终止
已经有4人回复
-
青椒八年已不青，大家都被折磨成啥样了？
已经有7人回复
-
为什么nbs上溴 没有产物点出现呢
已经有10人回复
-
救命帖
已经有11人回复
» 抢金币啦！回帖就可以得到:
-
nanomaterials特刊：纳米材料在电化学能源领域的应用（SCI 中科院三区，IF4.5）征稿
+5/225
-
“超分子材料交叉研究团队”联合诚聘博士后 [清华/吉大/复旦/北大]
+1/80
-
【2026/2027 哈工大计算机类博士招生】
+1/78
-
华南师范大学胡勇军教授课题组招收2026年博士研究生
+1/77
-
关于本子打包
+1/67
-
自驾淄博回四川遂宁过年，寻找小伙伴一起
+1/56
-
东北大学-招收2026年硕士研究生2-3名（金属材料3D打印方向）
+5/40
-
南开大学物理学院张书辉副教授招收凝聚态物理理论方向博士生、硕士生
+1/30
-
诚征女友，非诚勿扰
+3/29
-
中国科学院上海光学精密机械研究所 特种强激光薄膜课题组
+1/26
-
武汉大学博士生/直博生招聘（微纳光驱动与片上光子学）
+5/20
-
四川大学华西医院沈百荣教授课题组科研助理招聘启事
+1/17
-
澳科大诚招2026年秋季全奖博士研究生（药剂学/生物材料方向）
+1/13
-
深圳大学信息功能聚合物电介质方向“申请-考核制”博士生招生
+2/10
-
New Jersey Institute of Technology 陈浩老师团队诚招26级秋季博士生
+1/10
-
山东大学集成电路学院王凌云研究员招收2026年硕士生及联合培养硕士生
+1/6
-
福建师范大学柔性电子学院 院士团队招2026级博士 光电器件、发光传感忆阻器
+1/3
-
华南理工大学宋波教授招收2026年博士生（二氧化碳有机、高分子和光电生物催化还原）
+1/2
-
求博导收留
+1/2
-
中山大学农业与生物技术学院周潇峰课题组诚聘微生物/植物病理学方向科研助理
+1/1
3楼2010-11-27 12:06:52
5楼2010-11-27 17:30:37
7楼2010-11-27 18:59:03
8楼2010-11-27 20:05:11
9楼2010-11-27 21:24:00
10楼2010-11-27 22:50:45
11楼2010-11-27 22:56:31
12楼2010-11-28 00:57:04
13楼2010-11-28 10:44:08
14楼2010-11-28 16:48:49
15楼2010-11-29 08:30:07
17楼2010-11-29 21:08:03
简单回复
读书人12362楼
2010-11-27 12:06
回复
小木虫(沙发+1，金币+0.5):恭喜抢个沙发，再给个红包
2010-11-27 16:58
回复
2010-11-27 17:43
回复
shmily50516楼
2010-11-29 19:56
回复