Tomás Ó Con Cheanainn (9 March 1921[1] – 13 June 2015[2]) was an Irish scholar, historian, and professor.
His MA thesis concerned a hagiographical text in the Leabhar Breac - the early 15th-century codex was later a subject of "a major palaeographical study, which marked the commencement of a virtual reinvention, wrought single-handedly in his lifetime, of scholarly knowledge concerning the culture and traditions of Connacht."
Long before digital imagery and databases, he showed a capacity to recall and associate such features in manuscripts from different collections, and to fix an identity previously unrecognised.
He mastered the art of describing styles of handwriting with clarity and exactness, regardless of whether he was writing in English or, as he did almost exclusively in later years, in Irish."
[1] The last of his many articles, written when age 90, concerned his dynastic ancestors, the Uí Díarmata and the process by which its ruling sept adopted the surname Ua Con Cheanainn.