Gaetano Del Vecchio was born in Rome on 6th September 1906 and died on 21st March 1994. In 1930, he graduated on Medicine and Surgery at the Naples University with the highest marks. He became a Hygiene Lecturer in 1939 and a Social Medicine Lecturer in 1959. He subsequently carried out much important research on malaria and brucellosis. In 1933 he started working in the public health field as a provincial clinician in Bari, Potenza, Salerno and Rome. He was Professor at the Advanced School on Hygiene and Hospital Techniques at the Rome University and an ordinary Professor on Hygiene at the Arts Faculty of La Sapienza University in Rome. He was a teacher at many training schools for hospital staff and had an incredible number of scientific publications such as the well-known Treatise on Hygiene and Hospital Techniques which, after so many years, is still a landmark for those who study Service and Hospital Medicine.
He was awarded the Gold medal for public health valor and, in 1944, founded Igiene e Sanità Publicans, which he enthusiastically edited until his death. The topics touched by the magazine have always touched the most diverse fields, dealing with all sectors of Hygiene, reflecting a highly modern and innovative spirit and being a spur for many generations of researchers.

Vittorio Del Vecchio was born in Caserta on 9th March 1914 and died on 25th August 1972, when he was only 58. He graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the Naples University in 1939. He was a front-line medical officer during World War II. On his coming back in 1945, he was given a job as ordinary Assistant Professor at the Institute of Hygiene in Rome, which was then headed by Professor V. Puntoni. In 1957 he was awarded the Chair of his predecessor at the Medical Faculty of Rome. He directed his didactic and research activity towards the new issues of that time: Nuclear Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Social Medicine.

Among his most remarkable research works, there are such studies as those about basic urban air pollution, radioactive contamination of the biosphere (he set up the first Italian nuclear laboratory for Hygiene control in the Latium Region) and the enquiries about University Preventive Medicine (he set up the first Center on University Preventive Medicine)

On different occasions, he was Section Chairman at the Supreme Council for Health from 1964 to 1972. There, he played a fundamental role in enforcing compulsory anti-polio vaccination and extending antitetanic to the population at large. He edited the scientific review Nuovi Annali di Igiene e Microbiologia and, since its foundation, he co-edited the review Igiene e Sanità Pubblica. For some years, he was pro-rector at La Sapienza University in Rome and Chairman of the Association for the Fight against Microcythemia.