Henri Auguste Omont (15 September 1857 – 9 December 1940) was a French librarian, philologist, and historian.

Life

In 1881 he wrote a thesis De la ponctuation and graduated from 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 became a member of the Société des Antiquaires de France and of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1900. Between 1900 and 1921, Omont was president of the Société libre d'agriculture, sciences, arts et belles-lettres de l'Eure. He received the honorary degree Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) from the University of Oxford in October 1902, in connection with the tercentenary of the Bodleian Library. 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.

Selected works

Sources