• 1937: Born Oct. 6 in Verona, Italy

• Early 1940s: Capecchi's mother, a poet, is imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp and when a caretaker's money runs out, he is left to wander the streets at age 4½.

• 1946: She's released when Americans liberate the camp and finds him on his 9th birthday in a hospital. They leave for the United States not long after.

• 1961: Graduates from Antioch College in Ohio with bachelor's of science degree in chemistry and physics

• 1967: Graduates from Harvard University in Massachusetts with a doctorate in biophysics

• 1969-73: Assistant/associate professor at Harvard Medical School

• 1971: Recipient of America's Ten Outstanding Young Men Award

• 1973 to present: Wooed to the University of Utah where he works in a variety of positions, including current role as co-chairman of the Department of Human Genetics for the School of Medicine

• 1980: Capecchi applies for a National Institutes of Health's grant based on the concept of disabling genes and is told it will never work. Four years later, when he has proven it does work, NIH officials thank him for not giving up and fund a new grant.

• 1996: Laureate of the Kyoto Prize in Basic Science

• 2001: Laureate of the National Medal of Science and recipient of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research

• 2002/2003: Recipient of the Wolf Prize in Medicine, Israel's highest honor in medicine

• 2003: Recipient of the Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Cancer Research

• 2004: Recipient of an honorary degree of doctor of medicine, University of Florence School of Medicine, Italy

• 2005: Recipient of the March of Dimes prize in developmental biology