Italian publicist and intellectual whose writings significantly shaped the Risorgimento and whose journal, Il Politecnico (“The Polytechnic”), not only served as a vehicle for his political views but also was influential in introducing new scientific and technical improvements into Italy.

During Cattaneo's early career as a schoolmaster and as a graduate in law at the University of Padua (1824), he acquired a tremendous scope of knowledge: his writings treat such diversified subjects as literature and fine arts, philosophy, language, mathematics, chemistry, geology, agriculture, and penal reform, as well as various other economic, social, and political problems of his time. Considered Italy's first proponent of positivism, he tried to clarify the complex relations between morality and economics. His important scholarly work Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia (1844; “Natural and Civil Reports on Lombardy”) gained him election to the prestigious Lombard Institute.

Cattaneo was slow to enter the political sphere, in which he was considered a moderate, because he believed Italy was not ready for an armed revolt against Austria, which then controlled Milan. When the Milan rebellion, “the Five Days” (March 18–22, 1848), broke out, he became one of the leaders of the revolutionary council. On the reoccupation of Milan by the Austrians in August, Cattaneo left and settled in Switzerland. He wrote two books on the revolt: L'insurrection de Milan en 1848 (1848; “The Milan Insurrection of 1848”) and Dell'insurrezione di Milano nel 1848 e della successiva guerra (1849; “On the Milan Insurrection of 1848 and on the Succeeding War”).

Cattaneo returned to Milan in 1859 to refound his journal. In 1867 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies of the Kingdom of Italy but never took his seat because he was unwilling to take a required oath of loyalty to the ruling House of Savoy. He continued to oppose the monarchy from his home in Switzerland.