(Barcelona, 1920)

Antoni Maria Badia i Margarit completed his studies at the Estudis Universitaris Catalans and the University of Barcelona, where he graduated in Romance Philology in 1943. His doctoral thesis was based on a study of historical morphology (1947), which was led by Dámaso Alonso. By 1948, he was already senior lecturer in historical grammar of the Spanish language at the University of Barcelona, and in 1977, for the historical grammar of the Catalan language too.  Badia i Margarit devoted himself to research in the field of historical linguistics, particularly the Catalan language, and followed the great traditions of Ramón Menéndez Pidal: morphologic, phonetic, semantic and general themes (Estudios de fonética y fonología catalanas, 1948). He was also interested in dialectology, linguistic geography (Atlas lingüístic del domini català) and onomastics, comparative studies, the history of linguists, linguistic sociology and grammar (Llengua i cultura als Països Catalans, 1964 and La llengua dels barcelonins, 1969).
 
He attended congresses and lived in Germany (Heidelberg) and the USA (Georgetown, Washington, Madison). In addition to his teaching and research work, he also produced a number of publications such as: Gramática histórica catalana (1951, translated into Catalan in 1981) and Gramática catalana (1962), La llengua catalana ahir i avui (1973), Vint-i-cinc anys d'estudis sobre la llengua i la literatura catalanes. La llengua (1976), Ciència i passió dins la cultura catalana (1977), Formulari administratiu, aplicat especialment a la Universitat (1979), in collaboration with Carles Duarte, La formació de la llengua catalana. Assaig d'interpretació històrica (1981) and Llengua i poder (1986), Gramàtica Catalana. Descriptiva, normativa, diatòpica, diastràtica (1995), Les Regles de esquivar vocables i 'la qüestió de la llengua’ (1999).
 
Since 1987, he’s been head of the PatRom Catalan Team (Patronymica Romanica), working in the preparation of a dictionary of Romance lineage coordinated by the University of Trier (Germany). He’s been director of the magazine Estudis Romànics since 2000. He was also the president of the Associació Internacional de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes (1973-76) and the Grup Català de Sociolingüística in 1974, as well as the vice-chancellor of the University of Barcelona (1978-86), of which he is currently the emeritus vice-chancellor.  He was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universities of Salzburg (1972), Tolosa (1980), Sorbonne (1986), Perpignan (1989), Knox College of Galesburg (Illinois, 1990), Alicante (2002) and Valencia (2005). He is also a member of the Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona (1955) and the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (1968). In 1995 he was awarded by the Fundació Jaume I and by the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca in 1996. He received the Gold Medal of the City of Barcelona [Medalla d'Or de la Ciutat de Barcelona] in 1999 for his scientific merits, and also the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes (2003).

IEC: A.Badia i Margarit
Homenatge de la UB a A.M. Badia i Margarit