When Geoffrey Martin was appointed Keeper of the Public Records, the custodian of more than 1,000 years of national government and legal archive, his appointment was unusual. An academic and historian, Martin had had no previous link to the Civil Service.

His appointment, in May 1982, came at a time when the standing of the PRO had sunk to an unprecedented low among academics.

This was precipitated by a report the previous March, which criticised the arrangements for selecting and providing access to the public records. It was issued by the Committee on Modern Public Records, chaired by Sir Duncan Wilson. One of Martin's first tasks as Keeper was to appear before the House of Commons Education, Science and Arts Committee to answer questions arising from the Wilson report and the Government's response, published in March 1982.

Martin's priority was to build bridges with the world of academia, a task for which his experience as a Pro- Vice-Chancellor of Leicester University had ideally prepared him. By the time he retired in September 1988 Martin had successfully rehabilitated the PRO's reputation with academics.

He also played a pivotal role in promoting the PRO's extensive holdings outside academia. A particular success was the 1986 exhibition he arranged to mark the 900th anniversary of England's oldest public record, the Domesday Book. It ran for six months, attracting 131,000 visitors - more than the number of reader-visits consulting the PRO records in any previous year.

Geoffrey Haward Martin was born in Essex in 1928. In 1947 he went to Merton College, Oxford, to read history, specialising in Richard II and John of Gaunt. About 45 years later he produced a critically acclaimed edition and translation of a text he had studied as an undergraduate: The Chronicle of Henry Knighton, 1337-96.

A PhD on the medieval history of Ipswich followed, sparking Martin's interest in boroughs and leading to the eventual publication (with Sylvia McIntyre) of A Bibliography of British and Irish Municipal History (1973). Containing more than 6,000 entries collected on cards this, in the pre-computer era, was a considerable achievement. A strong attachment to his East Anglian roots also led Martin and his colleague Norman Scarfe to co-found in the 1950s the Suffolk Record Society. Over the next half-century Martin produced more than 50 volumes on the records, together with a series of edited charters.

After research at the University of Manchester in 1952, Martin joined the University College of Leicester (by then Leicester University) as a lecturer in economic history. He remained at Leicester for 30 years, as Reader in History, 1966-73, Public Orator, 1971-74, and Professor of History, 1973-82. He was also for a term head of the university's history department and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, 1979-82. He was twice visiting professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, in 1958-59 and 1967-68. In 1971 he returned to Merton College as a visiting research Fellow and became a senior research Fellow in 1990. In 1997 the first official history of the college was published, co-written by Martin and his former Oxford tutor Dr Roger Highfield.

In May 1982 Martin was appointed Keeper of the Public Records. While not temperamentally attuned to the increasing bureaucracy of the Civil Service with its relentless demands for targets and performance indicators, Martin ensured that the PRO conformed to these requirements without losing sight of its enduring purpose: to preserve, reveal and explain to the widest possible audience the myriad hidden treasures for which he, as keeper, he was responsible. One of his favourite words in relation to the public records was “serendipity”. On the international archive scene, Martin was highly active too. He was a member of the executive committee of the International Council on Archives, 1984-88, and also played a leading role in the formation in 1984 of the Association of Commonwealth Archivists, serving as its first chairman. In 1985 he led the first official delegation of British archivists to China, and he often represented the PRO overseas.

Within the UK he was chairman of the Council of the British Records Association, 1982-91, becoming thereafter one of its vice-presidents, and a vice-president of the Royal Historical Society, 1984-88. He was appointed CBE in 1986.

Martin's most intellectually productive years came after his retirement in 1988. He wrote more entries - 51 in total - for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography than any other outside contributor since the project was started in 1993. Starting with the 12th-century chroniclers Richard of Devizes and Gervase of Canterbury, he wrote at least one entry for the ODNB for each subsequent century. His final entry, published online in 2006, was of the railway historian Michael Robbins. In addition he wrote the biographies of several of his predecessors as Keeper of the Public Records, including Sir Francis Palgrave. He revised Vivian Galbraith's account of Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte.

On his retirement Martin was appointed to a research chair at the University of Essex, where he taught on the Second World War, and former pupils attest that his enthusiasm for his subject was deeply inspiring.

Through his wife, Martin had developed a attachment to the Lake District. In 1969 they bought a house there and this was where he spent the last five and a half years of his life, when illness reduced his activities. He was president of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 1999-2002.

He married Janet Douglas Hamer in 1953. She survives him, as do his four children.

Professor Geoffrey Martin, CBE, scholar and Keeper of the Public Records, 1982-88, was born on September 27, 1928. He died on December 20, 2007 aged 79