Salvadori was born in
Rome,
Italy in 1907. His father, Riccardo, an engineer who worked for the telephone company, became the chief engineer of the city of
Genoa when the phone company merged with their French counterpart. Salvadori's father later became the head of the gas and electric company in
Spain. His mother, Ermelinda Alatri, belonged to a rich Jewish family. Following his father's activities, Salvadori spent many years of his youth in
Madrid and only returned to Italy in 1923. Two years later, when he was 18, he started what was the first student
jazz band in Italy; one of his youthful dreams was to become a concert conductor, although his parents did not encourage this. He earned doctoral degrees in both civil engineering and
mathematics from the
University of Rome in 1930 and 1933, respectively. Then he served as an instructor at Engineering department of the
University of Rome and as consultant for
Istituto Nazionale per le Applicazioni del Calcolo (INAC), directed by
Mauro Picone, his mathematics teacher. Thanks to a grant, he went to London and in the next two years he did graduate research in
photoelasticity at
University College London, where he was in contact with Jews escaping from
Nazi persecutions. Subsequently, when he returned to Rome, Salvadori was a convinced critic of the regime of
Benito Mussolini, When he returned to Italy, he saw that there was no hope for a positive change in the political environment. The
University of Rome and
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) stripped him of his positions. After this, he and his wife left Italy for good, using the same visa. On the same day he arrived in New York, the CNR restored him as a consultant to INAC, thanks to the influence of Picone. ==Career==