Ten Nobels for the future

Renato Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro, Italy, in 1914. At the age of only 16, he enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Turin, where his fellow-students included Salvador Luria and Rita Levi Montalcini "who later had a strong influence on his life".

He received his medical degree in 1936, just before being called up for military service as a medical officer, and discharged in 1938. A year later, he was called up again and sent on the French front and then to Russia where he had a "narrow escape" in 1942 and was hospitalized for several months. He was sent back to Italy, and when the country was taken over by the German army he joined the Resistance, as a physician in the local partisan units. Subsequently he began his research activities and simultaneously enrolled in the Faculty of Physics, where he studied from 1945 to 1947, the year in which he left Italy for the United States.

He carried out research at the University of Indiana at Bloomington before moving to the California Institute of Technology, where he began his work with viruses. In 1955, he isolated the first mutation of the poliovirus, which Sabin would subsequently use in preparing the poliomyelitis vaccine.

In 1958, he began his work in oncological research, studying animal viruses which cause alterations in cells. His most important discovery was the demonstration that the DNA of the virus is incorporated in the genetic material of the cell, causing a permanent alteration. During those years, he worked at the Salk Institute and in 1972 he moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London, where he had the opportunity to work in the field of human cancer.

In 1964, he received the Lasker Award for medical research and in 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine (with David Baltimore and Howard Temin) for research on the interaction of tumor viruses and cellular genetic material.

In 1986 he launched the Human Genome Project, which aims at deciphering the human genetic code. In 1993 he recently returned to Italy and works at the Istituto di Tecnologie Biomediche of the National Research Council (Milan), as well as being President Emeritus of the Salk Institute and heading the Italian National Oncology Commission.

He is a member of various international organizations, including the Accademia dei Lincei, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society and the IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War).

1993
The interaction
of science and society:
benefits and fears

1994
Towards a culture
based on science

1997
The role
of child education
(June)

1997
The future
of genetic research
(December)

2000
Genetics: its contributions
and its problems