Antonio Panizzi, Italian Senator and patriot, fled from his native duchy of Modena into exile to avoid arrest by the Austrian authorities who had occupied that northern province of Italy. He landed first in Switzerland and ultimately found refuge in Liverpool, where he made a meager wage as an Italian tutor. A brief stint as a Professor of Italian Language at the University of London followed, but the salary was too low to live on. In 1831 he accepted the position of extra assistant position in the Department of Printed Books of the British Museum. He would not long linger in that humble station.

To best appreciate Panizzi's accomplishments, it is necessary to know the state of the British Museum when Panizzi joined the staff in 1831. The Museum was founded by an act of Parliament in 1753; nearly eighty years later it was still an unorganized hodgepodge of a multitude of books, manuscripts, and archaeological artifacts. Scholarly but unambitious employees were content to wander amongst the piles and ruminate. Panizzi had entered a world in which rules of cataloguing from the midieval period were still employed.

Panizzi's department was the least regarded of all the departments, though George III's 1923 bequest of his magnificent library necessitated the construction of a new building, a process underway when Panizzi arrived. By 1837 Panizzi had already testified to the Parliamentary Select Committee on the condition of the museum; the following year he was promoted to Keeper of the Department of Printed Books. In 1856 he was appointed as Principal Librarian.

The birth of modern cataloging codes is popularly attributed to Panizzi. He achieved all he did in the face of enormous opposition and political rivalry. He had to first convince the trustees that an alphabetical catalog had greater utility than a classed one, then fight for approval on every conceivable detail. Assisted by his colleagues, Panizzi drafted the monumental Niney-One Cataloguing Rules, an undertaking which wrested order from the chaos of centuries. It is generally agreed that his Ninety-One Cataloguing Rules intended exclusively for the the British Museum catalogue, formed the stock and substance for all Anglo-American codes that followed.

His cataloguing accomplishments are overshadowed by the great overarching dome of the great circular Reading Room, which he designed and for which he supervised the construction (commenced 1857). For over one hundred years the greatest scholars of the Western world have studied in the Reading Room, oblivious to the battles Panizzi waged in order to erect it. The Reading Room has become iconic of knowledge to an entire nation and throughout much of the learned world. Sadly, it will be vacated when the Museum (incorporated in 1973 with other institutions into the British Library) relocates its collections into a new structure being built near St. Pancras rail station.

Panizzi was invited to return to Italy upon its unification but chose instead to retain his British citizenship. He retired in 1866 and was knighted for his service three years later.