Nobel Prize winner versus George Clooney

The weekend before Thanksgiving was the annual retreat for my department at work. The keynote speaker this year was the 2007 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology, Mario Capecchi. Typically famous scientists usually arrive for a talk, give the talk, and then leave. However, Dr. Capecchi was nice enough to stay for the whole weekend! It was an obvious thrill for a lot of people to say that they had talked to, played ping pong with, and bowled with a Nobel Prize winner. He is obviously a great man who has an even more amazing life story.

Dr. Capecchi was born in pre-World War II Italy and when he was very young his mother was taken by the Nazis to Dachau for protesting the Fascists. From the ages of 4 to 9 he lived on the streets of Italy starving. His mother was released after the war and spent a year searching for him. She found him in a childrens hospital/orphanage where all of the children were naked and their daily meal consisted of a cup of coffee and a crust of bread. Apparently his mother gave him his first bath in 6 years when she found him. They then came to the U.S. to live with his uncle (mother's brother) and aunt in Pennsylvania. As Dr. Capecchi described it, he passed through Ellis Island on a Sunday and started school on a Monday. It was the first time in his life that he had been to school and he did not know how to read or write, nor did he know English. It is obvious that his family cared a lot about him and helped him get a proper education. He ended up doing his PhD under James Watson (of double-sided DNA Nobel Prize fame), and eventually took a professor position at the University of Utah where he did his work on homologous recombination in eukaryotes and created gene knock-out mice. This technique basically allows us to make mice with specific genetic mutations (i.e. mouse models) that cause and/or mimic diseases like cancer, obesity, and Parkinson's.

With all of this, Dr. Capecchi is a really nice man. I think a lot of people were intimidated by him the first day of the retreat. I saw him walking around the posters by himself and pretty much sort of isolated because people were afraid to talk to him. But as the weekend progressed, people got over their fears and were excited to get some face time with him. It was sweet.

The retreat ended with a talk given by Jorge Cham, the comic strip artist for PhD Comics. Being more of a grad-school pop-culture talk, his talk was entertaining and not intimidating. It was the cotton candy ending to a meat and potatoes weekend. When I spoke to Jorge during the book signing, he seemed sort of defensive about the fact that he is now a comic strip artist and not a practicing engineer. It makes me wonder how long he is going to keep this up.

The title of this blog is 'Nobel Prize winner versus George Clooney'. The Nobel Prize winner is obvious, but what about George Clooney? Last weekend I was hiking in the hills close to where I live and as we came down from the hill towards the houses, my sister said that George Clooney lives in that area. As we were walking past one house, I heard people playing basketball. The house had a huge court in front that was wrapped in green tennis court netting. My sister and I distinctly heard a man talking while playing basketball. Yup, that man was George Clooney.

If I were hosting a dinner party and had to pick between Mario Capecchi and George Clooney, Mario Capecchi would definitely win the invite... but I guess that it would be okay if George Clooney hung around for drinks afterwards ;)