Franco Pratesi

Franco Pratesi (born 1940) is an Italian professor of materials science and also a games researcher from Florence, Italy. He has "contributed in a remarkable way to... the history of ...Chess, Checker [sic], playing cards generally, Tarot and Go." He is a member of the International Playing Card Society and has written extensively in "The Playing-Card".
Life.
Franco Pratesi was born in 1940 in Florence. He spent years poring over the archives in Florence and Bologna to uncover the earliest references to playing cards, including Tarot cards. He is best known for his discovery of a sheet of paper that indicates that the divinatory use of Tarot was being practised as early as 1750 and may have developed in Italy independently of its invention in France, notwithstanding that such cards were originally intended for gaming.
Works (selection).
Pratesi has put his collected Tarot and playing card articles, some 313 "in toto", online at naibi.net.
Pratesi's scientific and gaming works also include the following: