Luciano Petech (8 June 1914, Trieste – 29 September 2010, Rome) was an Italian scholar of Himalayan history and the early relations between Tibet, Nepal and Italy. He was Chair of History of Eastern Asia at the University of Rome from 1955 to 1984. He was a student of the Italian explorer, academic, and scholar Giuseppe Tucci. Luciano Petech was born in 1914 and retired in 1984. He learned several European languages, including Latin, as well as Asian languages such as Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Newari, Sanskrit, Arabic, Hindi and Urdu.