Henri Omont

Signature of Henri Omont

Henri Auguste Omont, was a French librarian, philologist and historian, born on September 15, 1857, died December 9, 1940.

Life

In 1881 he wrote a thesis De la ponctuation and was graduated at the École Nationale des Chartes. As a librarian at the Bibliothèque nationale de France he participated in compiling the "general catalogue of the manuscripts of the public libraries of France" (Alençon, Avranches, Louviers). At the same time, he undertook research on ancient libraries and the history of printing and books. Omont was a member of the Société des Antiquaires de France and of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1900. After his death, his private library stayed with his widow until it was bought in 1948 by the Catholic University of Leuven, to help reconstruct its collections after they were destroyed by the Germans for the second time. In 1970, Omont's library was divided when the university separated into a Dutch-speaking university that remained in Leuven, and a French-speaking one that moved to a new university town called Louvain-la-Neuve.

In 1900 and 1921, Omont was president of the Société libre d'agriculture, sciences, arts et belles-lettres de l'Eure.

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