François Zola (born Francesco Antonio Giuseppe Maria Zolla; 7 August 1796 – 27 March 1847) was an Italian-born French engineer. He built the

Zola Dam Zola Dam is a dam in Le Tholonet near Aix-en-Provence, France. History The dam was designed by Italian-born engineer François Zola, the father of novelist Émile Zola. Its construction was initially rejected by Gaston Alexandre Auguste, Marq ...

, creating Lac Zola near

Le Tholonet Le Tholonet (; ''Lou Toulounet'' and ''Lo Tolonet'' in Provençal) is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in southern France. Its inhabitants are called ''Tholonétiens''. Geography The commune is near Aix-en-Provence, and at the fo ...

in Aix-en-Provence. Zola was an Italian engineer with some

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

ancestry, who was born in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

in 1795; his mother was French. He lived in Paris with his wife Émilie Aubert when their son, the author

Émile Zola Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of ...

, was born in 1840. The family moved to Aix-en-Provence when Émile was three years old. François died four years later, in 1847.

References

1796 births 1847 deaths Engineers from Venice People from Aix-en-Provence Italian emigrants to France Italian people of Greek descent French people of Greek descent {{France-engineer-stub