Franco Malerba

Franco Malerba (born Oct. 10, 1946, Genoa, Italy) is an Italian biophysicist, astronaut, and member of the European Parliament, the first Italian to travel into space. Malerba received a B.S. in engineering (with a specialization in telecommunications) from the University of Genoa in 1970. After doing research at the Italian National Research Council’s Cybernetics and Biophysics Laboratory in Genoa and at the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., he earned a doctorate in...