: Brunetto Tarquini became professor of medical semeiotics and cardiology in 1981, and chief of an internal medicine department in 1990, a position he held until his untimely death. As director of the Inter-University Center for Clinical Chronobiology and as coordinator of a post-doctoral school in chronobiology, Brunetto influenced many young Italian physicians. He became the leader of a budding specialty of chronomedicine, coordinating an international group. His focus included temporal aspects of vascular diseases from womb-to-tomb as well as oncological risk factors. His research thus ranged from neonatology over neuroendocrinology to geriatrics, by studies on the pineal in particular, documenting the signature of heliogeomagnetic master switches for circulating human melatonin.