Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman, KBE, FBA was born on 12th January 1860 in the Muzaffarpur district, India.

Oman was sent to England to be educated at Winchester College and at Oxford University, where he studied under William Stubbs. Here, he was invited to become a founding member of the Stubbs Society, which was under the patronage of Oman's don.

In 1881 Oman was elected to a Prize Fellowship at All Souls College, and remained so for the rest of his academic career. In 1905 he was elected the Chichele Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He was also elected to the FBA that year, and served as President of the Royal Historical Society (1917–1921), the Numismatic Society and the Royal Archaeological Institute.

Oman's academic career was interrupted by the First World War, during which he was employed by the government's Press Bureau and the Foreign Office.

After the war he was elected as the Conservative Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford constituency from 1919 to 1935, and was knighted KBE in the 1920 civilian war honours list.

He became an honorary fellow of New College in 1936, and received the honorary degrees of DCL (Oxford, 1926) and LL.D (Edinburgh, 1911 and Cambridge, 1927). He was awarded the Medal of the Royal Numismatic Society in 1928.

He died at Oxford aged 86 on 23rd June 1946.