[3][1] Catunda studied at the Grupo Escolar Cesário Bastos, at the Liceu Comercial, where he excelled in Portuguese and Mathematics, and at the Escola de Comércio José Bonifácio.

In 1922, he went to Rio de Janeiro, where he prepared for the exams at Colégio Pedro II by studying eleven hours a day, with the exception of Latin.

[3][1] In 1930, Catunda graduated as an engineer; in 1933, he applied for the position of professor of Complementary Analytical Geometry, Nomography and Differential and Integral Calculus at USP's Polytechnic School, but was unsuccessful.

In 1938, he worked as an engineer for Santos City Hall, but was hired by USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters as an assistant to the Italian Luigi Fantappiè in the subject of Mathematical Analysis.

The result of this trip was a paper entitled "Un teorema sugl'insiemi che si reconnette alla teoria dei funzionali analitici".

Reflections of this appear in his thesis "Sobre os fundamentos da teoria dos funcionais analíticos", presented in 1944 for the Mathematical Analysis chair at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters.

[1][3] In 1946, he obtained a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation and went to Princeton University, where he took courses with Emil Artin, N. Cramer, Heinz Hopf, Hermann Weyl and John von Neumann.