Alessandro Natta (7 January 1918 – 23 May 2001) was an Italian politician and secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1984 to 1988. An illuminist, Jacobin, and communist, as he used to describe himself, Natta represented the political and cultural prototype of a PCI militant and party member for over fifty years of the Italian democratic-republican history. After 1991, he did not join the PCI's successor parties. He concluded his master's studies in 1935 and obtained the classical maturity in 1936.