Georges Le Rider


Georges Charles Le Rider was a French historian, librarian and administrator, a specialist in Greek numismatics, who headed the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. He had a filial relationship with Henri Arnold Seyrig who became and remained his mentor.

Career

After he was admitted to the École normale supérieure in 1948, Le Rider obtained his agrégation de lettres classiques in 1952. A member of the École française d'Athènes from 1952 to 1955, he joined the French Institute of Archeology of the Near East, where he stayed until 1958. While living in Athens his son was born; Jacques was to become a renowned Germanist. On his return from Beirut, he entered the Bibliothèque nationale de France as curator of the Cabinet des Médailles, a department he then headed from 1961. In 1975 he left the Cabinet des Médailles to become the deputy head of the Bibliothèque nationale, a position he held until his appointment in 1981 at the head of the in Istanbul.
Concurrent with his work with these several institutions, he pursued a teacher career, first at the École pratique des hautes études, then at the University of Lille and at the university Paris-IV, before being elected professor of economic and monetary history of the Hellenistic East at the College de France in 1993. He retired in 1998.
He was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1989.
Le Rider was made a knight of the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur in 1977 and promoted to the level of officier on 30 January 2008. He was also an officer of the Ordre national du Mérite and commandeur of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

Works