Corpet was born in
Paris on 4 September 1949. He was the grandson of the musical critic Robert Brussel, and the great-grandson of Lucien Corpet, founder of
Corpet-Louvet. Olivier studied economics and sociology at the
School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, where he defended a thesis on social sciences, devoted to the scientific journal titled
Arguments published by
Les Éditions de Minuit from 1956 to 1962. Corpet began working as an engineer for the
French National Centre for Scientific Research. He then began his professional career as a writer in the early 1970s for
Autogestion, which discussed historical and theoretical research on self-management. In 1980, he changed the name of the magazine, adding an "s" to the end to make it
Autogestions. Corpet succeeded Yvon Bourdet as director of the journal until his retirement from
Autogestions in 1986. In 1985, Corpet created a research group on scientific journals at the Maison des Sciences de l'homme Paris-Nord. In 1986, he helped co-found Ent'revues, an association based on the research group. He also helped create the
Revue des revues alongside Jean Gattégno. Supported by
Jack Lang, Christian Bourgois,
Antoine Gallimard, and
Claude Durand, Corpet founded the Institute for Contemporary Publishing Archives with Pascal Fouché and Jean-Pierre Dauphin in 1988. He served as Director until 2013, when he resigned for health-related reasons. He entrusted management of the Institute to
Nathalie Léger, Albert Dichy, and André Derval. Olivier Corpet died in Paris on 6 October 2020 at the age of 71. ==Publications==