French palaeographer and archivist
Robert Marichal, (20 March 1904 – 23 October 1999) was a 20th-century French palaeographer and archivist.
Career.
A student at the École Nationale des Chartes, Robert Marichal obtained his archivist palaeographer degree in 1927 with a thesis entitled "Les traductions provençales du Livre de Sidrach, précédées d'un classement des manuscrits français". He was then a curator at the Archives nationales from 1929 to 1949.
Professor of French language and literature from the Middle Ages at the faculty of letters of the Institut catholique de Paris (1930-1974), he was a POW between 1940 and 1945, assigned to the Egyptian Museum of Berlin where he studied the papyrus collection.
From 1949 until 1974, he was director of Latin and French palaeography studies at the École pratique des hautes études, where he succeeded Charles Samaran. From 1959 to 1985, he was professor of history of languages and scripts at the École de bibliothécaires-documentalistes of the Institut catholique de Paris, of which he was director from 1965 to 1985. Robert Marichal was also president of the IVe section (Section of Historical and Philological Sciences) of the École pratique des hautes études (1969-1974).