Paul Robert

Paul Robert (born October 19, 1910, Orléansville, French Algeria [now Ech-Cheliff, Algeria]—died August 11, 1980, Mougins, France) was a French lexicographer who followed Émile Littré and Pierre Larousse in creating a French dictionary that became a household name.

Robert studied law before publishing the first installment of his dictionary. When the dictionary won an award from the French Academy, he was able to continue his work with a small team of assistants. Unlike the Littré and Larousse dictionaries, Robert’s seven-volume Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française (1951–70), better known as Le Grand Robert, was based on the principle of cross-referencing to create a network of etymological, semantic, or syntactical analogies so that the user could pursue "the many threads which simple logic weaves among words." Robert published a one-volume edition, Le Petit Robert, followed by Le Robert Micro (1971) and a French-English dictionary (1979). He also published an anthology, Divertissement sur 1’amour (1951) and a two-volume autobiography (1979–80).