Vignale was born in Naples, Italy, in 1957 and studied physics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he graduated in 1979. He completed his Ph.D. at Northwestern University in 1984, with a thesis on "Collective modes, effective interactions and superconductivity in the electron-hole liquid". He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, before joining the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Missouri in 1988.  He is Curators' Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri since 2006 and Fellow of the American Physical Society since 1997.