Nobel laureate ready to meet long-lost half-sister

Oct 24, 2007, 14:55 GMT

Vienna - Italian-born Nobel laureate Mario Capecchi said he wanted to meet the woman claiming to be his half-sister.

Marlene Ramberg-Bonelli, a 68-year-old woman living in Finkenstein, Austria claims to have discovered her long-lost half- brother in the Nobel laureate.

Dolomiten, a newspaper in the Italian province South Tyrol, said on Wednesday it was setting up a meeting between the two alleged siblings. 'She seems to be a very nice person,' Capecchi was quoted as saying by the paper.

'My mother never mentioned her, the news about her existence was very surprising. But during times of war unexpected things can happen. One of the most wonderful surprises thanks to being awarded the Nobel Prize is finding out about my sister's existence,' he said.

Bonelli, born in 1939, had been adopted by the Southern Tyrolian family Bonelli after their mother, Lucia (Lucy) Ramberg was deported to the Dachau concentration camp in 1941.

Her older half-brother was taken to safety to a farmer's family near Bolzano, but after the money his mother had provided ran out, he was left to fend for himself on the streets or living in orphanages for more than four years, almost dying of malnutrition.

Ramberg survived the death camp, was reunited with her son after a long search and emigrated to the United States. Some historians however dispute that Ramberg was in Dachau, as she cannot be found in the camp archives.

The molecular geneticist Capecchi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and Biology at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, was one of three co-winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

The three scientists were awarded the prize for their groundbreaking work regarding the principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells.

After the high honours for Capecchi became public, relatives in South Tyrol showed Bonelli an old photo of the Nobel laureate, claiming he was her brother. 'I only found out now and I am happy to know that he is still alive and especially that our mother remarried,' Bonelli said.