Here follows a list of notable alumni and faculty of the

École normale supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

. The term used in ENS slang for an alumnus is Archicube.See the dedicated website, http://www.archicubes.ens.fr/ .

Alumni

''The year when they entered the ENS is in parentheses.''

Nobel laureates

Henri Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; ; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the S ...

(1878) (1927

Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...

) *

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (; born 1 April 1933) is a French physicist. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Chu and William Daniel Phillips for research in methods of laser cooling and magnetic trap (atoms), trapping atoms. Currentl ...

(1953) (1997

Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

) *

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (; 24 October 1932 – 18 May 2007) was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991. Education and early life He was born in Paris, France, and was home-schooled to the age of 12. By the age of ...

(1951) (1991 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Gérard Debreu Gérard Debreu (; 4 July 1921 – 31 December 2004) was a French-born economist and mathematician. Best known as a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began work in 1962, he won the 1983 Nobel Memorial Prize ...

(1941) (1983

Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (), commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics(), is an award in the field of Economic Sciences, economi ...

) *

Albert Fert Albert Fert (; born 7 March 1938) is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks. Currently, he is an emeritus professor at Paris-Saclay University in Orsay ...

(1957) (2007 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Serge Haroche Serge Haroche (born 11 September 1944) is a French physicist who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with David J. Wineland for "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum sy ...

(1963) (2012 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Alfred Kastler Alfred Kastler (; 3 May 1902 – 7 January 1984) was a German-born French physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics. He is known for the development of optical pumping. Biography Kastler was born in Guebwiller (Alsace, at the time part of the Germ ...

(1921) (1966 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Gabriel Lippmann Gabriel Lippmann ( ; 16 August 1845 – 12 July 1921) was a French physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908 "for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference". Early life and educa ...

(1868) (1908 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Louis Néel Louis Eugène Félix Néel (; 22 November 1904 – 17 November 2000) was a French physicist born in Lyon who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1970 for his studies of the magnetic properties of solids. Biography Néel studied at the Lyc ...

(1924) (1970 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Jean-Baptiste Perrin Jean Baptiste Perrin (; 30 September 1870 – 17 April 1942) was a French atomic physicist who, in his studies of the Brownian motion of minute particles suspended in liquids (sedimentation equilibrium), verified Albert Einstein's explanation o ...

(1891) (1926 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Romain Rolland Romain Rolland (; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and Mysticism, mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary pro ...

(1886) (1915 Nobel Prize in Literature) * Paul Sabatier (1874) (1912

Nobel Prize in Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...

) *

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...

(1924) (declined 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature) *

Esther Duflo Esther Duflo, FBA (; born 25 October 1972) is a French-American economist currently serving as the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2019, she w ...

(2019 Nobel Prize in Economics)

Fields Medal laureates

The following

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of Mathematicians, International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place e ...

recipients were educated at the École Normale Supérieure. *

Laurent Schwartz Laurent-Moïse Schwartz (; 5 March 1915 – 4 July 2002) was a French mathematician. He pioneered the theory of Distribution (mathematics), distributions, which gives a well-defined meaning to objects such as the Dirac delta function. He was awar ...

(1934): 1950 Fields Medalist *

Jean-Pierre Serre Jean-Pierre Serre (; born 15 September 1926) is a French mathematician who has made contributions to algebraic topology, algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954, the Wolf Prize in 2000 and the inau ...

(1945): 1954 Fields Medalist *

René Thom René Frédéric Thom (; 2 September 1923 – 25 October 2002) was a French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958. He made his reputation as a topologist, moving on to aspects of what would be called singularity theory; he became ...

(1943): 1958 Fields Medalist *

Alain Connes Alain Connes (; born 1 April 1947) is a French mathematician, known for his contributions to the study of operator algebras and noncommutative geometry. He was a professor at the , , Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University. He was awar ...

(1966): 1982 Fields Medalist *

Jean-Christophe Yoccoz Jean-Christophe Yoccoz (29 May 1957 – 3 September 2016) was a French mathematician. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1994, for his work on dynamical systems. Yoccoz died on 3 September 2016 at the age of 59. Biography Yoccoz attended the Lyc� ...

(1975): 1994 Fields Medalist *

Pierre-Louis Lions Pierre-Louis Lions (; born 11 August 1956) is a French mathematician. He is known for a number of contributions to the fields of partial differential equations and the calculus of variations. He was a recipient of the 1994 Fields Medal and the 19 ...

(1975): 1994 Fields Medalist *

Laurent Lafforgue Laurent Lafforgue (; born 6 November 1966) is a French mathematician. He has made outstanding contributions to Langlands' program in the fields of number theory and Mathematical analysis, analysis, and in particular proved the Langlands conjecture ...

(1986): 2002 Fields Medalist *

Wendelin Werner Wendelin Werner (born 23 September 1968) is a German-born French mathematician working on random processes such as self-avoiding random walks, Brownian motion, Schramm–Loewner evolution, and related theories in probability theory and mathematic ...

(1987): 2006 Fields Medalist *

Cédric Villani Cédric Patrice Thierry Villani (; born 5 October 1973) is a French politician and mathematician working primarily on partial differential equations, Riemannian geometry and mathematical physics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010, and he ...

(1992): 2010 Fields Medalist *

Ngô Bảo Châu Ngô Bảo Châu (, born June 28, 1972) is a Vietnamese-French mathematician at the University of Chicago, best known for proving the fundamental lemma for automorphic forms (proposed by Robert Langlands and Diana Shelstad). He is the first Vie ...

(1992): 2010 Fields Medalist *

Hugo Duminil-Copin Hugo Duminil-Copin (born 26 August 1985) is a French mathematician specializing in probability theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2022. Biography The son of a middle school sports teacher and a former female dancer who became a primary ...

(2006): 2022 Fields Medalist

Sciences

Chemistry

* David Zitoun (1999) * Anna Fischer (2003)

Medicine and biology

Stanislas Dehaene Stanislas Dehaene (born May 12, 1965) is a French author and cognitive neuroscientist whose research centers on a number of topics, including numerical cognition, the neural basis of reading and the neural correlates of consciousness. As of 201 ...

(1984), current Chair of Experimental Psychology at the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

Charles Chamberland Charles Edouard Chamberland (; 12 March 1851 – 2 May 1908) was a French microbiologist from Chilly-le-Vignoble in the department of Jura who worked with Louis Pasteur. Chamberland was present at Pouilly-le-Fort when the efficacy of the anthr ...

, microbiologist, Known for

Chamberland filter A Chamberland filter, also known as a Pasteur–Chamberland filter, is a porcelain water filter invented by Charles Chamberland in 1884. It was developed after Henry Doulton's ceramic water filter of 1827. It is similar to the Berkefeld fil ...

Jean-Pierre Changeux Jean-Pierre Changeux (; born 6 April 1936) is a French neuroscientist known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins (with a focus on the allosteric proteins), to the early development of the ner ...

, neuroscientist *

Louis Pasteur Louis Pasteur (, ; 27 December 1822 – 28 September 1895) was a French chemist, pharmacist, and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, Fermentation, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the la ...

(1843), chemist and microbiologist, confirmed the

germ theory of disease The germ theory of disease is the currently accepted scientific theory for many diseases. It states that microorganisms known as pathogens or "germs" can cause disease. These small organisms, which are too small to be seen without magnification, ...

Physics

Édouard Branly Édouard Eugène Désiré Branly (, ; ; 23 October 1844 – 24 March 1940) was a French physicist and inventor known for his early involvement in wireless telegraphy and his invention of the coherer in 1890. Biography He was born on 23 October 1 ...

(1865) *

Léon Brillouin Léon Nicolas Brillouin (; August 7, 1889 – October 4, 1969) was a French physicist. He made contributions to quantum mechanics, radio wave propagation in the atmosphere, solid-state physics, and information theory. Early life Brilloui ...

Marcel Brillouin Louis Marcel Brillouin (; 19 December 1854 – 16 June 1948) was a French physicist and mathematician. He carried research in many realms of physics, including fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, geophysics, quantum mechan ...

(1878) * Monique Combescure *

Hubert Curien Hubert Curien (30 October 1924 – 6 February 2005) was a French physicist and a key figure in European science politics, as the President of List of presidents of the CERN Council, CERN Council (1994–1996), the first chairman of the European ...

(1945) *

Thomas Fink Thomas Fink (born 1972) is an Anglo-American physicist, author and entrepreneur. He has published papers in statistical physics and its applications, written two books and designed an iPhone app. He set up the London Institute for Mathematica ...

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (; ; 21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre, Burgundy and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series, which eventually developed into Fourier analys ...

Paul Langevin Paul Langevin (23 January 1872 – 19 December 1946) was a French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the '' Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes'', an anti-fascist ...

(1894) *

Yves Rocard Yves-André Rocard (; 22 May 1903 – 16 March 1992) was a French physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb for France. Lifes Rocard was born in Vannes. After obtaining a double doctorate in mathematics (1927) and physics (1928) he was aw ...

(1922) * Georges Sagnac (1889) *

Eugene Bloch Eugène Bloch (10 June 1878 1944) was a French physicist and professor at the École Normale Supérieure, and at the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris. Early life and education Bloch was born on 10 June 1878 in Soultz-Haut-Rhin, ...

* Hamdy Doweidar

Mathematics

Nalini Anantharaman Nalini Anantharaman (born 26 February 1976) is a French mathematician who has won major prizes including the Henri Poincaré Prize in 2012. Life Nalini Florence Anantharaman was born in Paris in 1976 to two mathematicians. Her father and her moth ...

(1994) *

Roger Apéry Roger Apéry (; 14 November 1916, Rouen – 18 December 1994, Caen) was a Greek-French mathematician most remembered for Apéry's theorem, which states that is an irrational number. Here, denotes the Riemann zeta function. Biography Apéry wa ...

(1936) * Paul Emile Appell (1872) *

Cahit Arf Cahit Arf (; 24 October 1910 – 26 December 1997) was a Turkish people, Turkish mathematician. He is known for the Arf invariant of a quadratic form in characteristic (algebra), characteristic 2 (applied in knot theory and surgery theory) in ...

(1932) * Denis Auroux (1995) *

René-Louis Baire René-Louis Baire (; 21 January 1874 – 5 July 1932) was a French mathematician most famous for his Baire category theorem, which helped to generalize and prove future theorems. His theory was published originally in his dissertation ''Sur les f ...

(1892) * Arnaud Beauville (1966) *

Marcel Berger Marcel Berger (14 April 1927 – 15 October 2016) was a French mathematician, doyen of French differential geometry, and a former director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS), France. Biography After studying from 1948 to 19 ...

(1948) *

Pierre Berthelot Pierre Berthelot (; 27 January 1943 – 7 December 2023) was a French mathematician at the University of Rennes. He developed crystalline cohomology and rigid cohomology. Publications *Berthelot, Pierre ''Cohomologie cristalline des schémas d ...

(1962) *

Philippe Biane Philippe Biane (born 1962) is a French mathematician known for his contributions in probability theory and group representation. He was awarded the Rollo Davidson Prize in 1995, together with Yuval Peres Yuval Peres (; born 5 October 1963) is ...

(1981) *

Émile Borel Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (; 7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956) was a French people, French mathematician and politician. As a mathematician, he was known for his founding work in the areas of measure theory and probability. Biograp ...

(1889) *

Louis Boutet de Monvel Louis Boutet de Monvel (22 June 1941 – 25 December 2014) was a French mathematician who worked on functional analysis. He was a student of Laurent Schwartz in Paris and was professor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University. He was married to ...

(1960) *

Emmanuel Breuillard Emmanuel Breuillard (born 25 June 1977) is a French mathematician. He was the Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics (DPMMS) at the University of Cambridge, and is now Professo ...

(1997) *

(1874) * Jean-Luc Brylinski (1971) *

François Bruhat François Georges René Bruhat (; 8 April 1929 – 17 July 2007) was a French mathematician who worked on algebraic groups. The Bruhat order of a Weyl group, the Bruhat decomposition, and the Schwartz–Bruhat functions are named after ...

(1948) *

Élie Cartan Élie Joseph Cartan (; 9 April 1869 – 6 May 1951) was an influential French mathematician who did fundamental work in the theory of Lie groups, differential systems (coordinate-free geometric formulation of PDEs), and differential geometry. He ...

(1888) *

Henri Cartan Henri Paul Cartan (; 8 July 1904 – 13 August 2008) was a French mathematician who made substantial contributions to algebraic topology. He was the son of the mathematician Élie Cartan, nephew of mathematician Anna Cartan, oldest brother of c ...

(1923), co-founder of

Bourbaki Bourbaki(s) may refer to : Persons and science * Charles-Denis Bourbaki (1816–1897), French general, son of Constantin Denis Bourbaki * Colonel Constantin Denis Bourbaki (1787–1827), officer in the Greek War of Independence and serving in the ...

* Pierre Cartier (1950) *

Claude Chevalley Claude Chevalley (; 11 February 1909 – 28 June 1984) was a French mathematician who made important contributions to number theory, algebraic geometry, class field theory, finite group theory and the theory of algebraic groups. He was a found ...

(1926), co-founder of Bourbaki *

Gustave Choquet Gustave Choquet (; 1 March 1915 – 14 November 2006) was a French mathematician. Choquet was born in Solesmes, Nord. His contributions include work in functional analysis, potential theory, topology and measure theory. He is known for creat ...

(1934) * Henri Cohen (1966) *

Yves Colin de Verdière Yves Colin de Verdière is a French mathematician. Life He studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in the late 1960s, obtained his Ph.D. in 1973, and then spent the bulk of his working life as faculty at Joseph Fourier University in ...

(1964) *

Jean-Louis Colliot-Thélène Jean-Louis Colliot-Thélène (born 2 December 1947) is a French mathematician. He is a Directeur de Recherches at CNRS at the Université Paris-Saclay in Orsay. He studies mainly number theory and arithmetic geometry. Awards *Prize of the Frenc ...

(1966) * Pierre Colmez (1981) *

(1966) *

Thierry Coquand Thierry Coquand (; born 18 April 1961) is a French computer scientist and mathematician who is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Gothenburg, having previously worked at INRIA. He is known for his work in constructive ...

(1980) *

Antoine Augustin Cournot Antoine Augustin Cournot (; 28 August 180131 March 1877) was a French philosopher and mathematician who contributed to the development of economics. Biography Antoine Augustin Cournot was born on August 28, 1801 in Gray, Haute-Saône. He ent ...

(1821) *

Louis Couturat Louis Couturat (; 17 January 1868 – 3 August 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. Couturat was a pioneer of the constructed language Ido. Life and education Born in Paris. In 1887 he entered École Normale S ...

(1887) *

Jean Gaston Darboux Jean-Gaston Darboux FAS MIF FRS FRSE (14 August 1842 – 23 February 1917) was a French mathematician. Life According to his birth certificate, he was born in Nîmes in France on 14 August 1842, at 1 am. However, probably due to the midn ...

(1891) *

Georges Darmois Georges Darmois (24 June 1888 – 3 January 1960) was a French mathematician and statistician. He pioneered in the theory of sufficiency, in stellar statistics, and in factor analysis. He was also one of the first French mathematicians to teach ...

(1906) * Patrick Dehornoy (1971) *

Jean Delsarte Jean Frédéric Auguste Delsarte (19 October 1903, in Fourmies – 28 November 1968, in Nancy) was a French mathematician known for his work in mathematical analysis, in particular, for introducing mean-periodic functions and generalised shift ...

(1922), co-founder of Bourbaki *

Michel Demazure Michel Demazure (; born 2 March 1937) is a French mathematician. He made contributions in the fields of abstract algebra, algebraic geometry, and computer vision, and participated in the Nicolas Bourbaki collective. He has also been president of ...

(1955) * Arnaud Denjoy (1902) *

Jean Dieudonné Jean Alexandre Eugène Dieudonné (; 1 July 1906 – 29 November 1992) was a French mathematician, notable for research in abstract algebra, algebraic geometry, and functional analysis, for close involvement with the Nicolas Bourbaki pseudonymous ...

(1924), co-founder of Bourbaki *

Jacques Dixmier Jacques Dixmier (born 24 May 1924) is a French mathematician. He worked on operator algebras, especially C*-algebras, and wrote several of the standard reference books on them, and introduced the Dixmier trace and the Dixmier mapping. Biogra ...

(1942) * Pierre Dolbeault (1944) *

Adrien Douady Adrien Douady (; 25 September 1935 – 2 November 2006) was a French mathematician born in La Tronche, Isère. He was the son of Daniel Douady and Guilhen Douady. Douady was a student of Henri Cartan at the École normale supérieure, and initi ...

(1954) *

Paul Dubreil Paul Dubreil (; 1 March 1904 – 9 March 1994) was a French mathematician. He was born in Le Mans, Maine, France and died in Soisy-sur-École, France. Dubreil was married to fellow mathematician Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin. Selected publicat ...

(1923) * Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin (1926) *

(2005) *

Charles Ehresmann Charles Ehresmann (19 April 1905 – 22 September 1979) was a German-born French mathematician who worked in differential topology and category theory. He was an early member of the Bourbaki group, and is known for his work on the differentia ...

(1927), co-founder of Bourbaki *

Ivar Ekeland Ivar I. Ekeland (born 2 July 1944, Paris) is a French mathematician of Norwegian descent. Ekeland has written influential monographs and textbooks on nonlinear functional analysis, the calculus of variations, and mathematical economics, as well a ...

(1963) *

Nicole El Karoui Nicole El Karoui (''Birth name, née'' List of English words of Yiddish origin, Schvartz) is a French mathematician and pioneer in the development of mathematical finance, born 29 May 1944 in Paris. She is considered one of the pioneers on the Fr ...

(1964) *

Hélène Esnault Hélène Esnault (born 17 July 1953) is a French and German mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry. Career Born in Paris, Esnault earned her PhD in 1976 from the University of Paris VII. She wrote her dissertation on ''Singularites r ...

(1973) *

Pierre Fatou Pierre Joseph Louis Fatou (28 February 1878 – 9 August 1929) was a French mathematician and astronomer. He is known for major contributions to several branches of mathematical analysis, analysis. The Fatou lemma and the Fatou set are named aft ...

(1898) *

Jacqueline Ferrand Jacqueline Lelong-Ferrand (17 February 1918, Alès, France – 26 April 2014, Sceaux, France) was a French mathematician who worked on conformal representation theory, potential theory, and Riemannian manifolds. She taught at universities in ...

(1936) *

Étienne Fouvry Étienne Fouvry (, born 1953) is a French mathematician working primarily in analytic number theory. Fouvry defended his dissertation in 1981 at the University of Bordeaux under the joint direction of Henryk Iwaniec and Jean-Marc Deshouillers. H ...

(1972) *

Maurice René Fréchet Maurice may refer to: *Maurice (name), a given name and surname, including a list of people with the name Places * or Mauritius, an island country in the Indian Ocean *Maurice, Iowa, a city * Maurice, Louisiana, a village * Maurice River, a tr ...

(1900) *

Évariste Galois Évariste Galois (; ; 25 October 1811 – 31 May 1832) was a French mathematician and political activist. While still in his teens, he was able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by Nth root, ...

(1829), originated

Galois theory In mathematics, Galois theory, originally introduced by Évariste Galois, provides a connection between field (mathematics), field theory and group theory. This connection, the fundamental theorem of Galois theory, allows reducing certain problems ...

René Gateaux René Eugène Gateaux (Near the footer of page 32, on the left. The image can be enlarged.)In his birth certificate and own signature, his name is written without a circumflex accent, but it is found in some of his own publications, and moreso i ...

(1907) *

Roger Godement Roger Godement (; 1 October 1921 – 21 July 2016) was a French mathematician, known for his work in functional analysis as well as his expository books. Biography Godement started as a student at the École normale supérieure in 1940, where he ...

(1940) *

François Golse François Golse (born 10 September 1962 in Talence) is a French mathematician. Golse was awarded a doctorate in 1986 at the Paris XIII University with thesis advisor Claude Bardos and thesis ''Contributions à l'étude des équations du transfert ...

(1981) *

Édouard Goursat Édouard Jean-Baptiste Goursat (21 May 1858 – 25 November 1936) was a French mathematician, now remembered principally as an expositor for his ''Cours d'analyse mathématique'', which appeared in the first decade of the twentieth century. It s ...

(1876) *

Alice Guionnet Alice Guionnet (born 24 May 1969) is a French mathematician known for her work in probability theory, in particular on large random matrices. Biography Guionnet entered the École Normale Supérieure (Paris) in 1989. She earned her PhD in 1995 ...

(1989) *

Jacques Hadamard Jacques Salomon Hadamard (; 8 December 1865 – 17 October 1963) was a French mathematician who made major contributions in number theory, complex analysis, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. Biography The son of a tea ...

(1884) * Guy Henniart (1973) *

Jacques Herbrand Jacques Herbrand (12 February 1908 – 27 July 1931) was a French mathematician. Although he died at age 23, he was already considered one of "the greatest mathematicians of the younger generation" by his professors Helmut Hasse and Richard Coura ...

(1925) *

Luc Illusie Luc Illusie (; born 1940) is a French mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry. His most important work concerns the theory of the cotangent complex and deformations, crystalline cohomology and the De Rham–Witt complex, and logarithmic ...

(1959) *

Hervé Jacquet Hervé Jacquet is a French American mathematician, working in automorphic forms. He is considered one of the founders of the theory of automorphic representations and their associated L-functions, and his results play a central role in modern num ...

(1959) *

Gaston Julia Gaston Maurice Julia (3 February 1893 – 19 March 1978) was a French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set. His works were popularized by Benoit Mandelbrot; the Julia and Mandelbrot fractals are closely related. He founded, ind ...

(1911) *

Fanny Kassel Fanny Kassel (born 1983) is a French mathematician, specializing in the theory of Lie groups. Education and career Kassel entered the École normale supérieure in 2003 and received her PhD under the direction of Yves Benoist at the Universit ...

(2003) *

Jean-Louis Koszul Jean-Louis Koszul (; 3 January 1921 – 12 January 2018) was a French mathematician, best known for studying geometry and discovering the Koszul complex. He was a second generation member of Bourbaki. Biography Koszul was educated at the in Str ...

(1940) *

François Labourie François Labourie (born 15 December 1960) is a French mathematician who has made various contributions to geometry, including pseudoholomorphic curves, Anosov diffeomorphisms, and convex geometry. In a series of papers with Yves Benoist and P ...

(1980) *

Vincent Lafforgue Vincent Lafforgue (born 20 January 1974) is a French mathematician who is active in algebraic geometry, especially in the Langlands program, and a CNRS " Directeur de Recherches" at the Institute Fourier in Grenoble. He is the younger brother of ...

(1992) * Gérard Laumon (1972) *

Jean-François Le Gall Jean-François Le Gall (born 15 November 1959) is a French mathematician working in areas of probability theory such as Brownian motion, Lévy processes, superprocesses and their connections with partial differential equations, the Brownian snake ...

(1978) *

Henri Lebesgue Henri Léon Lebesgue (; ; June 28, 1875 – July 26, 1941) was a French mathematician known for his Lebesgue integration, theory of integration, which was a generalization of the 17th-century concept of integration—summing the area between an ...

(1894) *

Pierre Lelong Pierre Lelong (14 March 1912 Paris – 12 October 2011)
at the académie des sciences was a Fr ...

(1931) *

Jean Leray Jean Leray (; 7 November 1906 – 10 November 1998) was a French mathematician, who worked on both partial differential equations and algebraic topology. Life and career He was born in Chantenay-sur-Loire (today part of Nantes). He studied at Éc ...

(1926) *

André Lichnerowicz André Lichnerowicz (; January 21, 1915, Bourbon-l'Archambault – December 11, 1998, Paris) was a French differential geometer and mathematical physicist. He is considered the founder of modern Poisson geometry. Biography His grandfather Jan f ...

(1933) *

Jacques-Louis Lions Jacques-Louis Lions (; 2 May 1928 – 17 May 2001) was a French mathematician who made contributions to the theory of partial differential equations and to stochastic control, among other areas. He received the SIAM's John von Neumann Lecture p ...

(1950) *

François Loeser François Loeser (born August 25, 1958) is a French mathematician. He is Professor of Mathematics at the Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University in Paris. From 2000 to 2010 he was Professor at École Normale Supérieure. Since 2015, he is a senior member ...

(1978) *

Édouard Lucas __NOTOC__ François Édouard Anatole Lucas (; 4 April 1842 – 3 October 1891) was a French mathematician. Lucas is known for his study of the Fibonacci sequence. The related Lucas sequences and Lucas numbers are named after him. Biography Luc ...

(1861) *

Bernard Malgrange Bernard Malgrange (6 July 1928 – 5 January 2024) was a French mathematician who worked on differential equations and singularity theory. He proved the Ehrenpreis–Malgrange theorem and the Malgrange preparation theorem, essential for the c ...

(1947) *

Frank Merle Frank Merle is an American screenwriter, director and producer best known for '' The Employer'' and '' From Jennifer.'' Also a theatrical producer and director, Merle graduated from The Theatre School at DePaul University. Film career Merle co ...

(1982) *

Loïc Merel Loïc Merel (born 13 August 1965) is a French mathematician. His research interests include modular forms and number theory. Career Born in Carhaix-Plouguer, Brittany, Merel became a student at the École Normale Supérieure. He finished his doc ...

(1986) *

Paul-André Meyer Paul-André Meyer (21 August 1934 – 30 January 2003) was a French mathematician, who played a major role in the development of the general theory of stochastic processes. He worked at the Institut de Recherche Mathématique (IRMA) in Stra ...

(1954) *

Yves Meyer Yves F. Meyer (; born 19 July 1939) is a French mathematician. He is among the progenitors of wavelet theory, having proposed the Meyer wavelet. Meyer was awarded the Abel Prize in 2017. Biography Born in Paris, Yves Meyer studied at the Lyc ...

(1957) *

Paul Montel Paul Antoine Aristide Montel (29 April 1876 – 22 January 1975) was a French mathematician. He was born in Nice, France and died in Paris, France. He researched mostly on holomorphic functions in complex analysis. Montel was a student of Émile ...

(1894) * Sophie Morel (1999) *

André Néron André Néron (; November 30, 1922, La Clayette, France – April 6, 1985, Paris, France) was a French mathematician at the Université de Poitiers who worked on elliptic curves and abelian varieties. He discovered the Néron minimal model ...

(1943) *

Joseph Oesterlé Joseph Oesterlé (born 1954) is a French mathematician who, along with David Masser, formulated the ''abc'' conjecture which has been called "the most important unsolved problem in diophantine analysis". He is a member of Bourbaki Bourbaki(s) m ...

(1973) *

Patrice Ossona de Mendez Patrice Ossona de Mendez is a French mathematician specializing in topological graph theory who works as a researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris.. He is editor-in-chief of the ''European Journal of Combinatorics' ...

(1986) *

Henri Padé Henri Eugène Padé (; 17 December 1863 – 9 July 1953) was a French mathematician, who is now remembered mainly for his development of Padé approximation techniques for functions using rational functions. Education and career Pad ...

(1883) *

Paul Painlevé Paul Painlevé (; 5 December 1863 – 29 October 1933) was a French mathematician and statesman. He served twice as Prime Minister of France, Prime Minister of the French Third Republic, Third Republic: 12 September – 13 November 1917 and 17 A ...

(1883) * Bernadette Perrin-Riou (1974) *

Mihailo Petrović Mihailo ( sr-cyr, Михаило) is a South Slavic masculine given name. It is a variant of the Hebrew name ''Michael'', and its cognates include Mihajlo and Mijailo. Common as a given name among Serbs, it is an uncommon surname. Notable peopl ...

(1890) *

Charles Émile Picard Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was ...

(1874) *

Vincent Pilloni Vincent Pilloni is a French mathematician, specializing in arithmetic geometry and the Langlands program. Career Pilloni studied at the École Normale Supérieure and received his doctorate in 2009 from Université Sorbonne Paris Nord with thesis ...

(2002) *

Charles Pisot Charles Pisot (2 March 1910 – 7 March 1984) was a French mathematician. He is chiefly recognized as one of the primary investigators of the numerical set associated with his name, the Pisot–Vijayaraghavan numbers. He followed the classical pa ...

(1929) * Georges Poitou (1945) *

René de Possel Lucien Alexandre Charles René de Possel (7 February 1905 – 1974) was a French mathematician, one of the founders of the Bourbaki group, and later a pioneer computer scientist, working in particular on optical character recognition. Life Posse ...

(1923), co-founder of Bourbaki *

Victor Puiseux Victor Alexandre Puiseux (; 16 April 1820 – 9 September 1883) was a French mathematician and astronomer. Puiseux series are named after him, as is in part the Bertrand–Diquet–Puiseux theorem. His work on algebraic functions and unifo ...

(1837) *

Michel Raynaud Michel Raynaud (; 16 June 1938 – 10 March 2018 Décès de Michel Raynaud
So ...

(1958) *

Raphaël Rouquier Raphaël Alexis Marcel Rouquier (born 9 December 1969) is a French mathematician and a professor of mathematics at UCLA. Education Rouquier was born in Étampes, France. Rouquier studied at the École Normale Supérieure from 1988 to 1989 ...

(1988) *

Laure Saint-Raymond Laure Saint-Raymond (born 1975) is a French mathematician, and a professor of mathematics at Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES). She was previously a professor at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. She is known for her work in par ...

(1994) *

Pierre Samuel Pierre Samuel (12 September 1921 – 23 August 2009) was a French mathematician, known for his work in commutative algebra and its applications to algebraic geometry. The two-volume work ''Commutative Algebra'' that he wrote with Oscar Zariski ...

(1940) *

Marie-Hélène Schwartz Marie-Hélène Schwartz (1913 – 5 January 2013) was a French mathematician, known for her work on characteristic numbers of spaces with singularities... Education and career Born Marie-Hélène Lévy, she was the daughter of mathematician P ...

(1934) *

Sylvia Serfaty Sylvia Serfaty (born 1975) is a French mathematician working in the United States. She won the 2004 EMS Prize for her contributions to the Ginzburg–Landau theory, the Henri Poincaré Prize in 2012, and the of the French Academy of Sciences in ...

(1994) * Jean-Claude Sikorav (1976) *

Christophe Soulé Christophe Soulé (born 1951) is a French mathematician working in arithmetic geometry. Education Soulé started his studies in 1970 at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Paris in 1979 under the sup ...

(1970) *

Jean-Marie Souriau Jean-Marie Souriau (3 June 1922, Paris – 15 March 2012, Aix-en-Provence) was a French mathematician. He was one of the pioneers of modern symplectic geometry. Education and career Souriau started studying mathematics in 1942 at École No ...

(1942) * Gheorghe Tzitzeica (1896) *

Jean-Louis Verdier Jean-Louis Verdier (; 2 February 1935 – 25 August 1989) was a French mathematician who worked, under the guidance of his doctoral advisor Alexander Grothendieck, on derived categories and Verdier duality. He was a close collaborator of Groth ...

(1955) *

Ernest Vessiot Ernest Vessiot (; 8 March 1865 – 17 October 1952) was a French mathematician. He was born in Marseille, France, and died in La Bauche, Savoie, France. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1884. He was Maître de Conférences at Lille ...

(1884) *

Paul Vidal de la Blache Paul Vidal de La Blache (, Pézenas, Hérault, 22 January 1845 – Tamaris-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, 5 April 1918) was a French geographer. He is considered to be the founder of modern French geography and also the founder of the Fr ...

(1863), considered the founder of French modern geography *

Claire Voisin Claire Voisin (born 4 March 1962) is a French mathematician known for her work in algebraic geometry. She is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and held the chair of algebraic geometry at the Collège de France from 2015 to 2020. Work Sh ...

(1981) *

Jean-Loup Waldspurger Jean-Loup Waldspurger (born 2 July 1953) is a French mathematician working on the Langlands program and related areas. He proved Waldspurger's theorem, the Waldspurger formula, and the local Gan–Gross–Prasad conjecture for orthogonal groups ...

(1972) *

André Weil André Weil (; ; 6 May 1906 – 6 August 1998) was a French mathematician, known for his foundational work in number theory and algebraic geometry. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. His influence is du ...

(1922), co-founder of Bourbaki * Jean-Pierre Wintenberger (1973) * Nicușor Daniel Dan (1992), president of

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

Humanities

Jean Bousquet Jean Bousquet (9 May 1912, Bordeaux – 1 April 1996, aged 83) was a 20th-century French people, French Hellenistic period, Hellenist. Biography In 1931, Jean Bousquet was received "cacique" (first) at the admission competition of the École norm ...

(1931), classicist, archaeologist (Delphi excavations), Director of ENS *

François Déroche François Déroche (born October 24, 1952) is an academic and specialist in Codicology and Palaeography, especially in relation to Quranic studies. He is a professor at the Collège de France, where he is holding "History of the Quran Text and T ...

, orientalist, islamologist, and specialist in

Codicology Codicology (; from French ''codicologie;'' from Latin , genitive , "notebook, book" and Greek , ''-logia'') is the study of codices or manuscript books. It is often referred to as "the archaeology of the book," a term coined by François Masai. ...

and

Palaeography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...

Philosophy

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

(1939), Marxist philosopher *

Raymond Aron Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (; ; 14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian and journalist, one of France's most prominent thinkers of the 20th century. Aron is best known for his ...

(1924), political philosopher, founder of French conservative thought post-1960 *

Alain Badiou Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault ...

, philosopher *

Étienne Balibar Étienne Balibar (; ; born 23 April 1942) is a French philosopher. He has taught at the University of Paris X, at the University of California, Irvine and is currently an Anniversary Chair Professor at the Centre for Research in Modern European ...

(1960), philosopher and linguist *

Georges Canguilhem Georges Canguilhem (; ; 4 June 1904 – 11 September 1995) was a French philosopher and physician who specialized in epistemology and the philosophy of science (in particular, philosophy of biology, biology). Life and work Canguilhem entered t ...

(1924), philosopher of science *

Jean Cavaillès Jean Cavaillès (; ; 15 May 1903 – 4 April 1944) was a French philosopher and logician who specialized in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. He took part in the French Resistance within the '' Libération'' movement and was a ...

(1923), philosopher and

Résistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the Nazi occupation and the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during the Second World War. Resistance cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the Maquis ...

hero * Emile Auguste Chartier "Alain" (1889), philosopher * Gustave Belot (1878), philosopher *

André Comte-Sponville André Comte-Sponville (born 12 March 1952) is a French philosopher. Biography André Comte-Sponville was born in Paris, France. He studied in the École Normale Supérieure and earned a PhD from Panthéon-Sorbonne University, and is aggregate ...

(1972), philosopher and essayist *

Victor Cousin Victor Cousin (; ; 28 November 179214 January 1867) was a French philosopher. He was the founder of " eclecticism", a briefly influential school of French philosophy that combined elements of German idealism and Scottish Common Sense Realism. ...

(1810), spiritualist philosopher and historian of philosophy *

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

(1952), founder of

deconstruction In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from ...

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...

(1946), historian of systems of thought, member of

* Georges Gusdorf (1933), philosopher and historian of ideas *

Jean Hyppolite Jean Hyppolite (; 8 January 1907 – 26 October 1968) was a French philosopher known for championing the work of G. W. F. Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers. His major works in ...

(1924), founder of Hegelian studies in France *

Vladimir Jankélévitch Vladimir Jankélévitch (; 31 August 1903 – 6 June 1985) was a French philosopher and musicologist. Biography Jankélévitch was the son of Ukrainian Jewish parents, who had emigrated to France. In 1922 he started studying philosophy at the � ...

(1922), philosopher, musicologist *

Quentin Meillassoux Quentin Meillassoux (; ; born 26 October 1967) is a French philosopher. He teaches at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Biography Quentin Meillassoux is the son of the anthropologist Claude Meillassoux. He ...

, philosopher *

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. ( ; ; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interes ...

(1926), phenomenologist *

Jacques Rancière Jacques Rancière (; ; born 10 June 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis. After co-authoring ...

(1960), philosopher *

Philippe-Joseph Salazar Philippe-Joseph Salazar (; born 10 February 1955) is a French rhetorician and philosopher, Early life Salazar was born on 10 February 1955 in Casablanca, then part of French Morocco. Salazar attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand secondary-scho ...

(1975), rhetorician, member of College international de philosophie *

(1924), philosopher, novelist, playwright, journalist *

Hippolyte Taine Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (21 April 1828 – 5 March 1893) was a French historian, critic and philosopher. He was the chief theoretical influence on French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism and one of the first practitione ...

(1893) *

Simone Weil Simone Adolphine Weil ( ; ; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic and political activist. Despite her short life, her ideas concerning religion, spirituality, and politics have remained widely influential in cont ...

(1928), philosopher and mystic

Sociology

* Jean-Michel Berthelot (1966) *

Raymond Boudon Raymond Boudon (27 January 1934 – 10 April 2013) was a sociologist, philosopher and Professor in the Paris-Sorbonne University. Career With Alain Touraine, Michel Crozier and Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Boudon is one of the leading French sociol ...

(1951) *

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (, ; ; ; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influ ...

(1951) *

Émile Durkheim David Émile Durkheim (; or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French Sociology, sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern soci ...

(1879), considered the founder of French sociology

Literature

Paul Bénichou Paul Bénichou (; 19 September 1908 – 14 May 2001) was a French/Algerian writer, intellectual, critic, and literary historian. Bénichou first achieved prominence in 1948 with ''Morales du grand siècle'', his work on the social context of the ...

(1927) *

Robert Brasillach Robert Brasillach (; 31 March 1909 – 6 February 1945) was a French author and journalist. He was the editor of '' Je suis partout'', a nationalist newspaper which advocated fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot. After the liberation o ...

, novelist, critic and pro-Nazi collaborationist *

Aimé Césaire Aimé Fernand David Césaire (; ; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a French poet, author, and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word in French. He ...

(1935), poet and politician *

Marie Darrieussecq Marie Darrieussecq (; born 3 January 1969, Bayonne) is a French writer. She is also a translator, and has practised as a psychoanalyst. Her books explore the unspoken and abandoned territories in literature. Her work is dense, marked by a consta ...

(1990), novelist *

Assia Djebar Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (; 30 June 1936 – 6 February 2015), known by her pen name Assia Djebar (), was an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance ...

(1955), Algerian novelist and filmmaker *

Jean Giraudoux Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (; ; 29 October 1882 – 31 January 1944) was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His wo ...

(1903), playwright *

Julien Gracq Julien Gracq (; born Louis Poirier; 27 July 1910 – 22 December 2007) was a French writer. He wrote novels, critiques, a play, and poetry. His literary works were noted for their dreamlike abstraction, elegant style and refined vocabulary. He ...

(1930), novelist and literary critic *

Sabiha Al Khemir Sabiha Al Khemir or Sabiha Khemir (Arabic: صبيحة الخمير) (born 1959) is a Tunisian writer, illustrator, and expert in Islamic art, whose work is concerned with cultural bridging and cultural dialogues. She was the founding director of ...

(1982), writer, illustrator and expert in Islamic art *

Édouard Louis Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule; 30 October 1992) is a French writer and sociologist. Biography Édouard Louis, born Eddy Bellegueule was born and raised in the town of Hallencourt in northern France, which is the setting of his firs ...

(2011), novelist and sociologist *

Paul Nizan Paul-Yves Nizan (; 7 February 1905 – 23 May 1940) was a French philosopher and writer. He was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire and studied in Paris where he befriended fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre at the Lycée Henri IV. He became a member of ...

(1924) *

Charles Péguy Charles Pierre Péguy (; 7 January 1873 – 5 September 1914) was a French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism; by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing ( ...

(1894), poet *

Claude Ribbe Claude Ribbe (born 13 October 1954) is a French writer, activist and filmmaker. Early life and education Ribbe was born in Paris and is alumnus of the Ecole normale superieure. Career Ribbe has specialised in the history of colonialism in the ...

(1974), historian and novelist *

(1886), novelist *

Jules Romains Jules Romains (born Louis Henri Jean Farigoule; 26 August 1885 – 14 August 1972) was a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement. His works include the play '' Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine'', and a cyc ...

(1906), novelist *

Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (; born 28 March 1960) is a French people, Franco-Belgians, Belgian playwright, short story writer and novelist, as well as a film director. His Play (theater), plays have been staged in over fifty countries all over the wo ...

(1980)

Literary criticism

Jean-Charles Darmon Jean-Charles Darmon is a French literary critic born in 1961. Biography After entering the ''École Normale Supérieure'' in 1982, his first teaching post was at Amherst College (USA). While a fellow of the ''Fondation Thiers'', he completed ...

(1982) *

Gérard Genette Gérard Genette (; 7 June 1930 – 11 May 2018) was a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and with figures such as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of ''b ...

(1951) *

Jean-Pierre Richard Jean-Pierre Richard (15 July 1922 – 15 March 2019) was a French literary critic. Biography Jean-Pierre Richard began his advanced studies at the École normale supérieure, at the time a school of the University of Paris, in 1941, passed the ...

(1941)

Philology, grammar, linguistics

Anatole Bailly Anatole Bailly (; Orléans, 16 December 1833 – 12 December 1911, Orléans) was a French Hellenist, author of the famous ' , which was published in 1895. Biography Anatole Bailly was born at Orleans on 16 December 1833 to a family of moderate w ...

(1853), hellenist *

(1931), hellenist *

Michel Bréal Michel Jules Alfred Bréal (; 26 March 183225 November 1915), French philologist, was born at Landau in Rhenish Palatinate. He is often identified as a founder of modern semantics. He was also the creator of the modern marathon race, having pr ...

(1852), philologist *

Jérôme Carcopino Jérôme Carcopino (27 June 1881 – 17 March 1970) was a French historian, author, and Nazi collaborator. He was the fifteenth member elected to occupy seat 3 of the Académie française, in 1955. Biography Carcopino was born at Verneuil-sur-A ...

(1901), specialist of Roman Antiquity *

Jacqueline de Romilly Jacqueline Worms de Romilly (; née David; Greek: Ζακλίν ντε Ρομιγύ; 26 March 1913 – 18 December 2010) was a French philologist, classical scholar and fiction writer. She was the first woman nominated to the Collège de France, ...

(1933), hellenist, specialist of the history and literature of Ancient Greece *

Antoine Culioli Antoine Culioli (4 September 1924 – 9 February 2018)https://diakritik.com/2018/02/12/antoine-culioli-1924-2018-figure-majeure-de-la-linguistique-contemporaine/ was a French linguist of Corsican origin. He developed a linguistic theory known as ' ...

(1944), linguist * Oswald Ducrot (1949), linguist, specialist of

pragmatics In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...

Georges Dumézil Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French Philology, philologist, Linguistics, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and comparative mythology, mythology. He was a prof ...

(1916), philologist, linguist, caucasianist, specialist of

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

language and society *

Alexandre François Alexandre François is a French linguist specialising in the description and study of the indigenous languages of Melanesia. He belongs t''Lattice'' a research centre of the CNRS and dedicated to linguistics. Research Language description and ...

(1992), linguist, specialist of

Oceanic languages The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...

Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (; 18 March 1830 – 12 September 1889) was a French historian. Biography Coulanges was born in Paris; he was of Breton descent. After studying at the École Normale Supérieure, he attended the French School at ...

(1850), specialist of classical and mediaeval history *

Marcel Granet Marcel Granet (; 29 February 1884 – 25 November 1940) was a French sociologist, ethnologist and sinologist. As a follower of Émile Durkheim and Édouard Chavannes, Granet was one of the first to bring sociological methods to the study ...

(1904), sinologist *

Pierre Grimal Pierre Grimal (November 21, 1912, in Paris – November 2, 1996, in Paris) was a French historian, classicist and Latinist. Fascinated by the Greek and Roman civilizations, he did much to promote the cultural inheritance of the classical w ...

(1933), Latinist *

Claude Hagège Claude Hagège (; born 1 January 1936) is a French linguist. Biography He was elected to the Collège de France in 1988 and received several awards for his work, including the Prix de l'Académie Française and the CNRS Gold medal. Famous for b ...

(1955), linguist * (1963), linguist, specialist of

* , specialist of Armenian and

comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language and comparative linguistics aim ...

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

Gilbert Lazard Gilbert Lazard ( – ) was a French linguist and Iranologist. His works include the study of various Iranian languages, translations of classical Persian poetry, and research on linguistic typology, notably on morphosyntactic alignment. He also ...

(1940), linguist, iranologist * Christiane Marchello-Nizia (1961), specialist of

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

* (1968), syntactician

History

* Marc Bloch (1904), co-founder of the Annales School * Lucien Febvre (1899), co-founder of the Annales School * Henri Hauser (1885), economic historian *

Ernest Lavisse Ernest Lavisse (; 17 December 184218 August 1922) was a French historian. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Lavisse is also known for being one of the main creator of the ''roman national'' ("National myth", lit. "nat ...

(1862), a founder of Positivist history *

Jacques Le Goff Jacques Le Goff (; 1 January 1924 – 1 April 2014) was a French historian and prolific author specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries. Le Goff championed the Annales School movement, which emphasizes long-term ...

(1945), medievalist *

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie Emmanuel Bernard Le Roy Ladurie (, 19 July 1929 – 22 November 2023) was a French historian whose work was mainly focused upon Languedoc in the ''Ancien Régime'', particularly the history of the peasantry. One of the leading historians of Franc ...

(1949), historian *

Neil MacGregor Robert Neil MacGregor (born 16 June 1946) is a British art historian and former museum director. He was editor of the '' Burlington Magazine'' from 1981 to 1987, then Director of the National Gallery, London, from 1987 to 2002, Director of th ...

, art historian, Director of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

Paul Mantoux Paul Mantoux (14 April 1877 – 14 December 1956) was a French economic historian of the Industrial Revolution who taught at the University of London, the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, and the Geneva Graduate Institute. His be ...

(1894), economic historian *

Jacques Soustelle Jacques Soustelle (; 3 February 1912 – 6 August 1990) was an important and early figure of the Free French Forces, a politician who served in the French National Assembly and at one time served as Governor General of Algeria, an anthropologis ...

(1929), ethnologist *

Gilbert Dagron Gilbert Dagron (January 26, 1932 - August 4, 2015, Paris, France) was a French historian, Byzantine scholar, professor at the College de France (1975-2001), president of the International Association for Byzantine Studies, member of the Academy o ...

(1953), historian

Economics

Yves Balasko Yves Balasko is a French economist working in England. He was born in Paris on 9 August 1945 to a Hungarian father and a French mother. After studying mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris he became interested in economics. He s ...

(1964) *

(1992) *

Emmanuel Farhi Emmanuel Farhi (8 September 1978 – 23 July 2020) was a French economist who served as the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University from 2018 till his death in 2020. A specialist in macroeconomics, taxation and finance, h ...

(1997) *

Xavier Gabaix Xavier Gabaix (born August 1971) is a French economist, currently the Pershing Square Professor of Economics and Finance at Harvard University. He has been listed among the top 8 young economists in the world by ''The Economist''. He holds a B.A. ...

(1991) *

Thomas Piketty Thomas Piketty (; born 7 May 1971) is a French economist who is a professor of economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, associate chair at the Paris School of Economics (PSE) and Centennial Professor of Economics ...

(1989) *

Emmanuel Saez Emmanuel Saez (born November 26, 1972) is a French-American economist who is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His work, done with Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, includes tracking the incomes of the poor, mid ...

(1992) * Christian Morrisson (1957) * (1962)

Government and public policy

Léon Blum André Léon Blum (; 9 April 1872 – 30 March 1950) was a French socialist politician and three-time Prime Minister of France. As a Jew, he was heavily influenced by the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century. He was a disciple of socialist l ...

(1890) (expelled during his third year), first

Socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

Prime Minister of France The prime minister of France (), officially the prime minister of the French Republic (''Premier ministre de la République française''), is the head of government of the French Republic and the leader of its Council of Ministers. The prime ...

(1936) *

Pierre Brossolette Pierre Brossolette (; 25 June 1903 – 22 March 1944) was a French journalist, politician and major hero of the French Resistance in World War II. Brossolette ran a Resistance intelligence hub from a Parisian bookshop on the Rue de la Pompe, be ...

(1922), politician and resistant *

Laurent Fabius Laurent Fabius (; born 20 August 1946) is a French politician. A member of the Socialist Party (France), Socialist Party, he previously served as Prime Minister of France from 17 July 1984 to 20 March 1986. Fabius was 37 years old when he was a ...

(1966), Prime Minister of France, 1984-1986 *

Édouard Herriot Édouard Marie Herriot (; 5 July 1872 – 26 March 1957) was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic who served three times as Prime Minister (1924–1925; 1926; 1932) and twice as President of the Chamber of Deputies. He led the f ...

(1891), Prime Minister of France, 1924–1925, 1926 and 1932 *

Jean Jaurès Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon Jaurès (3 September 185931 July 1914), commonly referred to as Jean Jaurès (; ), was a French socialist leader. Initially a Moderate Republican, he later became a social democrat and one of the first possibi ...

(1878), Socialist leader *

Alain Juppé Alain Marie Juppé (; born 15 August 1945) is a French politician. A member of The Republicans, he was Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac, during which period he faced major strikes that paralysed the c ...

(1964), Prime Minister of France 1995-1997 *

Bruno Le Maire Bruno Le Maire (; born 15 April 1969) is a French politician, writer, and former diplomat who served as Economy and Finance Minister from 2017 to 2024 under President Emmanuel Macron. A former member of The Republicans (LR), which he left in ...

(1989), Minister of the Economy, 2017-present;

Minister of Agriculture An agriculture ministry (also called an agriculture department, agriculture board, agriculture council, or agriculture agency, or ministry of rural development) is a ministry charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister f ...

2009-2012 *

Benny Lévy Benny Lévy (also Pierre Victor; 28 August 1945 – 15 October 2003) was a philosopher, political activist and author. A political figure of May 1968 in France, he was the disciple and last personal secretary of Jean-Paul Sartre from 1974 to 1980. ...

(1965), founder of

Gauche prolétarienne The (GP) was a French Maoist political party which existed from 1968 to 1974. As Christophe Bourseiller put it, "Of all the Maoist organizations after May 1968, the most important numerically as well as in cultural influence was without question ...

(1883), mathematician; Prime Minister of France in 1917 and 1925 *

Georges Pompidou Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou ( ; ; 5 July 19112 April 1974) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1969 until his death in 1974. He previously served as Prime Minister of France under President Charles de Gaulle from 19 ...

(1931), Prime Minister of France 1962–1968;

President of France The president of France, officially the president of the French Republic (), is the executive head of state of France, and the commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces. As the presidency is the supreme magistracy of the country, the po ...

1969-1974 *

Michel Sapin Michel Sapin (; born 9 April 1952) is a French politician who served as Minister of Finance from 1992 to 1993 and again from 2014 to 2017. He is a member of the Socialist Party. He was Minister of the Civil Service from 2000 to 2002 and Mini ...

(1974), Finance Minister 1992–1993; Minister of Civil Servants and State Reforms 2000-2002

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