Salk Institute virologist Renato Dulbecco, an Italian immigrant who earned a Nobel Prize for helping explain how viruses can cause cancer and who helped create the Human Genome Project, died Sunday at his home in La Jolla. He would have been 98 on Wednesday.

Salk officials said Dulbecco, a founding fellow and former president at Salk, had been in poor health for roughly six months. His death comes less than two months after the unexpected death of another Salk icon, biochemist Wylie Vale, who died while vacationing in Hawaii.

“Renato was one of the most brilliant scientific minds of our generation,” said Salk President William R. Brody. “His contributions have truly made this world better for all of us. His legacy is imbued in the scientists and physicians whom he trained and inspired and who themselves have gone on to make major discoveries to advance biomedical science.”

Dulbecco, who was known as a gentle man and a gentleman, was born on Feb. 22, 1914, in Catanzaro, Italy. He was one of the scores of European investigators who transformed science in the 20th century through groundbreaking discoveries in everything from chemistry to physics.

Dulbecco entered the University of Turin at the age of 16 and earned his medical degree, going on to teach and conduct research there until the 1940s. His work was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. He became a medical officer in the Italian army and was ordered to the Russian front.

His turning point, he said in an oral history reported by The New York Times, was when he saw railway laborers wearing yellow stars. He was horrified to learn that the workers were Jews who would be killed when their work was done.

After he was injured in Russia, Dulbecco was sent home to recuperate. Instead, he became a member of the Resistance, putting his life at risk. He told U-T San Diego in August 2010, “There were things I had to do, whether they were dangerous or not. Life was very much of the moment. We felt lucky to survive it.”

Dulbecco returned to his research following the war and became friends with Salvador Luria, a fellow Italian who would later earn a Nobel Prize for his work in microbiology. Luria was then working at Indiana University and was deeply impressed by Dulbecco. He invited him to work in the United States, an offer Dulbecco accepted even though he spoke very little English.


Dulbecco became deeply involved in exploring how viruses can infect normal cells, later causing some of them to become cancerous. His findings opened pathways for the treatment of cancer, and helped with the creation of a vaccine against polio. His research complemented that of Howard Temin, one of his former students, and David Baltimore, the future president of Caltech. The three men went on to share the 1975 Nobel in physiology or medicine.


