Renato Dulbecco ( , ; February 22, 1914 – February 19, 2012) was an Italian–American virologist who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on oncoviruses, which are viruses that can cause cancer when they infect animal cells. He studied at the University of Turin under Giuseppe Levi, along with fellow students Salvador Luria and Rita Levi-Montalcini, who also moved to the U.S. with him and won Nobel prizes. He was drafted into the Italian army in World War II, but later joined the resistance. Early life Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro (Calabria, Southern Italy), but spent his childhood and grew up in Liguria, in the coastal city Imperia. He graduated from high school at 16, then moved to the University of Turin. Despite a strong interest in mathematics and physics, he decided to study medicine. At only 22, he graduated in morbid anatomy and pathology under the supervision of professor Giuseppe Levi. During these years he met Salvador Luria and Rita Levi-Montalcini, whose friendship and encouragement would later bring him to the United States. In 1936 he was called up for military service as a medical officer, and later (1938) discharged. In 1940 Italy entered World War II and Dulbecco was recalled and sent to the front in France and Russia, where he was wounded. After hospitalization and the collapse of Fascism, he joined the resistance against the German occupation. Career and research After the war he resumed his work at Levi's laboratory, but soon he moved, together with Levi-Montalcini, to the U.S., where, at Indiana University, he worked with Salvador Luria on bacteriophages. In the summer of 1949 he moved to Caltech, joining Max Delbrück's group (see Phage group). In the early 1950s, on Delbruck's advice, Dulbecco visited the major centers of animal virus work in the US in order to discover a way to quantitatively assay animal viruses by a plaque technique, similar to the technique that had recently been developed for bacterial viruses. Within less than a year, he worked out such a method for Western equine encephalitis virus, which then opened up animal virology to quantitative work. The technique was then used by Dulbecco and Vogt to study the biological properties of poliovirus. These accomplishments led to Dubecco's appointment first to associate professor, and then to full professor at the California Institute of Technology. There he started his studies about