In 1962 he founded in Naples the Laboratorio Internazionale di Genetica e Biofisica (International Laboratory of Genetics and Biophysics) which helped advance biological research in Italy and wrote several influential books on genetics.
Buzzati was born in Milan, the son of Giulio Cesare (d. 1920), a professor of law at the University of Pavia.
The family villa in Belluno was well stocked with books and Buzzati was influenced by scholarship at an early age.
In 1950 he wrote a critique of Italian science noting that more money was spent on building the walls of institutes and laboratories than on scientists.
He served as a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1952 to 1959 after which he moved to the University of Pavia where he worked until 1969.