Renato Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro, Italy, in 1914. He studied medicine in Turin before joining the Italian Resistance movement against Benito Mussolini during the Second World War.

After the war Dulbecco emigrated to the United States and worked with Salvador Luria at the University of Indiana before moving on to the University of California.

Dulbecco discovered the molecular basis of the cancer-causing properties of a group of viruses. In 1975 he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine with David Baltimore and Howard Temin for their work on the cancer-causing properties of the genes of papovaviruses.