Vincent J. Galvani was a chemical engineer who helped design the trigger mechanism for the atom bomb. He researched the triggers of other ordnance used in World War II, such as buzz-bombs and torpedoes, in order to create his designs.
Galvani was born in 1908. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and served as chief chemist at the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant in Indiana, where he met his wife, Mary Moriarty Galvani. Galvani would later serve in the United States Navy as lieutenant commander in the Bureau of Ordnance, where he was commissioned to work on the Manhattan Project. In 1949, Galvani and his wife moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he worked as a chemical engineer for Sears, Roebuck & Company.