100 Notable alumni of
Polytechnic School
Updated:
Polytechnic School is 87th in the world, 27th in Europe, and 3rd in France by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 100 notable alumni from Polytechnic School sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. 3 individuals affiliated with Polytechnic School won Nobel Prizes in Physics.
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Bernard Arnault
- Occupations
- businesspersonengineerart collector
- Biography
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Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault is a French businessman, investor and art collector. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. Arnault is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$218 billion as of 10 February 2024, according to Forbes.
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Carlos Ghosn
- Occupations
- entrepreneurwriterbusiness executiveengineerinternational forum participant
- Biography
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Carlos Ghosn is a businessman and former automotive executive, widely known for having dramatically fled house arrest in 2019 in Japan, while awaiting trial on financial impropriety charges related to his tenure at Nissan.
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Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
- Occupations
- statesperson
- Biography
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Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing, also known as Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981.
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Auguste Comte
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1814-1816
- Occupations
- writermathematicianphilosophersociologist
- Biography
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Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte was a French philosopher, mathematician and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. Comte's ideas were also fundamental to the development of sociology, with him inventing the very term and treating the discipline as the crowning achievement of the sciences.
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Élisabeth Borne
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1981
- Occupations
- politicianengineerofficial
- Biography
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Élisabeth Borne is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 2022 to 2024. She is a member of President Emmanuel Macron's party Renaissance. Borne is the second woman to hold the position of Prime Minister after Édith Cresson, who served from 1991 to 1992.
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Alfred Dreyfus
- Occupations
- military personnelarmy officer
- Biography
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Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry from Alsace whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. The incident has gone down in history as the Dreyfus affair, the reverberations from which were felt throughout Europe. It ultimately ended with Dreyfus' complete exoneration.
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Ferdinand Foch
- Occupations
- military officermilitary personnel
- Biography
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Ferdinand Foch was a French general, Marshal of France and member of the Académie Française. He distinguished himself as Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front during the First World War in 1918.
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Henri Poincaré
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1873
- Occupations
- topologistphilosopher of sciencephilosopherpolymathwriter
- Biography
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Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist", since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime. Due to his scientific success, influence and his discoveries, he has been deemed "the philosopher par excellence of modern science."
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André-Marie Ampère
- Occupations
- chemistphysicistinventorengineermathematician
- Biography
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André-Marie Ampère was a French physicist and mathematician who was one of the founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as "electrodynamics". He is also the inventor of numerous applications, such as the solenoid (a term coined by him) and the electrical telegraph. As an autodidact, Ampère was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and professor at the École polytechnique and the Collège de France.
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Jacques Attali
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1963-1965
- Occupations
- writerinternational forum participanteconomistbankerpolitician
- Biography
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Jacques José Mardoché Attali is a French economic and social theorist, writer, political adviser and senior civil servant.
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Henri Becquerel
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1872
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacherchemistengineernuclear physicist
- Biography
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Antoine Henri Becquerel was a French engineer, physicist, Nobel laureate, and the first person to discover radioactivity. For work in this field he, along with Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie, received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. The SI unit for radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named after him.
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Benoit Mandelbrot
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- 1945-1947 studied engineering
- Occupations
- computer scientistwritermathematicianuniversity teacherscientist
- Biography
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Benoit B. Mandelbrot was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of physical phenomena and "the uncontrolled element in life". He referred to himself as a "fractalist" and is recognized for his contribution to the field of fractal geometry, which included coining the word "fractal", as well as developing a theory of "roughness and self-similarity" in nature.
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Patrick Drahi
- Occupations
- entrepreneur
- Biography
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Patrick Drahi is an Israeli billionaire magnate and investor with interests in media and telecoms. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of the European-based telecom group Altice. A former French citizen, he lives in Switzerland.
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Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Nathalie Geneviève Marie Kosciusko-Morizet, often referred to by her initials NKM, is an engineer and former politician.
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Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
- Occupations
- university teacherchemistboard memberphysicistengineer
- Biography
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Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac was a French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for his discovery that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen by volume (with Alexander von Humboldt), for two laws related to gases, and for his work on alcohol–water mixtures, which led to the degrees Gay-Lussac used to measure alcoholic beverages in many countries.
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Augustin-Louis Cauchy
- Occupations
- physicistengineermathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist who made pioneering contributions to several branches of mathematics, including mathematical analysis and continuum mechanics. He was one of the first to state and rigorously prove theorems of calculus, rejecting the heuristic principle of the generality of algebra of earlier authors. He is one of the founders of complex analysis and the study of permutation groups in abstract algebra.
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Albert François Lebrun
- Occupations
- politicianengineerentomologist
- Biography
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Albert François Lebrun was a French politician, President of France from 1932 to 1940. He was the last president of the Third Republic. He was a member of the centre-right Democratic Republican Alliance (ARD).
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Joseph Joffre
- Occupations
- military personnel
- Biography
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Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre, was a French general who served as Commander-in-Chief of French forces on the Western Front from the start of World War I until the end of 1916. He is best known for regrouping the retreating allied armies to defeat the Germans at the strategically decisive First Battle of the Marne in September 1914.
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Nicolas Carnot
- Occupations
- physicistengineermilitary engineermathematician
- Biography
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Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot was a French mechanical engineer in the French Army, military scientist and physicist, often described as the "father of thermodynamics". He published only one book, the Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (Paris, 1824), in which he expressed the first successful theory of the maximum efficiency of heat engines and laid the foundations of the new discipline: thermodynamics. Carnot's work attracted little attention during his lifetime, but it was later used by Rudolf Clausius and Lord Kelvin to formalize the second law of thermodynamics and define the concept of entropy. Driven by purely technical concerns, such as improving the performance of the steam engine, Sadi Carnot's theoretical work laid important foundations for modern science as well as technologies such as the automobile and jet engine.
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Jean-Marc Jancovici
- Years
- 1962-.. (age 62)
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- 1981-1984 graduated with diplôme d'ingénieur
- Occupations
- university teacherbusiness executiveengineerconsultantlecturer
- Biography
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Jean-Marc Jancovici is a French engineering consultant, energy and climate expert, professor, conference speaker, writer, and independent columnist. He is co-founder and associate at the Carbone 4 consultancy firm, and the founding president of the think-tank The Shift Project.
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Serge Dassault
- Occupations
- entrepreneurpublisheraerospace engineerbusinesspersonpolitician
- Biography
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Serge Dassault was a French engineer, businessman and politician. He was the chairman and chief executive officer of Dassault Group, and a conservative politician. According to Forbes, Dassault's net worth was estimated in 2016 at US$15 billion.
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Tidjane Thiam
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1982-1984
- Occupations
- chief executive officerbusinesspersoninternational forum participant
- Biography
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Tidjane Thiam is an Ivorian and French businessman, and the executive chairman of Freedom Acquisition Corp. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Swiss bank Credit Suisse from March 2015 to February 2020. He was the chief financial officer of British banking group Prudential from 2007 to 2009, and then its CEO until 2015. In 2019, Thiam became a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
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Henry de Lesquen
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1968-1971
- Occupations
- radio directorpoliticianofficial
- Biography
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Henry de Lesquen is a French politician. A retired official and former radio host, de Lesquen has been the president of the Carrefour de l'Horloge, a national liberal think tank, since 1985. A blogger and YouTuber since the 2010s, he has participated in popularising the concept of "remigration" in France, as well as spreading racialist concepts built on anthropologist Carleton S. Coon's works.
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Jules Brunet
- Occupations
- military officermilitary personnel
- Biography
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Jules Brunet was a French military officer who served the Tokugawa shogunate during the Boshin War in Japan. Originally sent to Japan as an artillery instructor with the French military mission of 1867, he refused to leave the country after the shōgun was defeated, and played a leading role in the separatist Republic of Ezo and its fight against forces of the Meiji Restoration. After the rebellion's defeat he returned to France, fought in the Franco-Prussian War, and later reached the rank of general of division and worked for the Ministry of War.
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Georges Sorel
- Occupations
- writersociologistengineerphilosophertrade unionist
- Biography
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Georges Eugène Sorel was a French social thinker, political theorist, historian, and later journalist. He has inspired theories and movements grouped under the name of Sorelianism. His social and political philosophy owed much to his reading of Proudhon, Karl Marx, Giambattista Vico, Henri Bergson (whose lectures at the Collège de France he attended), and later William James. His notion of the power of myth in collective agency inspired socialists, anarchists, Marxists, and fascists. Together with his defense of violence, the power of myth is the contribution for which he is most often remembered.
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André Citroën
- Occupations
- industrialistentrepreneurengineer
- Biography
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André-Gustave Citroën was a French industrialist and the founder of French automaker Citroën. He is also remembered for his application of double helical gears.
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François Arago
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1803
- Occupations
- mathematicianuniversity teacherphysicistastronomerwriter
- Biography
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Dominique François Jean Arago, known simply as François Arago ( French: [fʁɑ̃swa aʁaɡo]; Catalan: Francesc Aragó, IPA: [fɾənˈsɛsk əɾəˈɣo]; 26 February 1786 – 2 October 1853), was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer, freemason, supporter of the Carbonari revolutionaries and politician.
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Prince Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orléans
- Occupations
- politicianaristocratmilitary officer
- Biography
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Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orléans was the eldest son of King Louis Philippe I of France and Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily. He was born in exile in his mother's native Sicily while his parents were the Duke and Duchess of Orléans. Ferdinand Philippe was heir to the House of Orléans from birth. Following his father's succession as King of the French in 1830, he became the Prince Royal of France and Duke of Orléans. He died in 1842, never to succeed his father or see the collapse of the July Monarchy and subsequent exile of his family to the United Kingdom.
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Sadi Carnot
- Occupations
- engineerpoliticiancivil engineerofficial
- Biography
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Marie François Sadi Carnot was a French statesman, who served as the President of France from 1887 until his assassination in 1894.
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Siméon Denis Poisson
- Occupations
- university teacherastronomerphysicistpoliticianstatistician
- Biography
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Baron Siméon Denis Poisson FRS FRSE was a French mathematician and physicist who worked on statistics, complex analysis, partial differential equations, the calculus of variations, analytical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics, elasticity, and fluid mechanics. Moreover, he predicted the Poisson spot in his attempt to disprove the wave theory of Augustin-Jean Fresnel, which was later confirmed.
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Alain Aspect
- Occupations
- researcherquantum physicist
- Biography
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Alain Aspect is a French physicist noted for his experimental work on quantum entanglement.
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Gaspard Monge
- Occupations
- mathematicianuniversity teacherchemistphysicistpolitician
- Biography
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Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse was a French mathematician, commonly presented as the inventor of descriptive geometry, (the mathematical basis of) technical drawing, and the father of differential geometry. During the French Revolution he served as the Minister of the Marine, and was involved in the reform of the French educational system, helping to found the École Polytechnique.
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Jean Tirole
- Occupations
- economistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Jean Tirole is a French economist who is currently a professor of economics at Toulouse 1 Capitole University. He focuses on industrial organization, game theory, banking and finance, and psychology. In particular, he focuses on the regulation of economic activity in a way that does not hinder innovation while maintaining fair rules.
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Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry
- Occupations
- aerospace engineermilitary engineer
- Biography
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Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry was a French Air Force lieutenant colonel, military air-weaponry engineer and the creator of the Nord SS.10/SS.11 missiles. Bastien-Thiry attempted to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle on 22 August 1962 in retaliation for de Gaulle's decision to accept Algerian independence. Bastien-Thiry was the last person to be executed by firing squad in France.
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Robert Nivelle
- Occupations
- military personnel
- Biography
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Robert Georges Nivelle was a French artillery general officer who served in the Boxer Rebellion and the First World War. In May 1916, he succeeded Philippe Pétain as commander of the French Second Army in the Battle of Verdun, leading counter-offensives that rolled back the German forces in late 1916. During these actions he and General Charles Mangin were accused of wasting French lives. He gives his name to the Nivelle Offensive.
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Augustin-Jean Fresnel
- Occupations
- physicistengineercivil engineer
- Biography
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Augustin-Jean Fresnel was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s until the end of the 19th century. He is perhaps better known for inventing the catadioptric (reflective/refractive) Fresnel lens and for pioneering the use of "stepped" lenses to extend the visibility of lighthouses, saving countless lives at sea. The simpler dioptric (purely refractive) stepped lens, first proposed by Count Buffon and independently reinvented by Fresnel, is used in screen magnifiers and in condenser lenses for overhead projectors.
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Pierre Schaeffer
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1929-1931
- Occupations
- music criticmusicianradio personalitymusic teachercomposer
- Biography
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Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innovative work in both the sciences—particularly communications and acoustics—and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime.
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Patrick Pouyanné
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- In 1986 graduated with diplôme d'ingénieur
- Occupations
- entrepreneurindustrialistbusinesspersonengineerinternational forum participant
- Biography
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Patrick Jean Pouyanné is a French engineer who has been serving as chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies since 2014.
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Jean Borotra
- Occupations
- tennis playermilitary officer
- Biography
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Jean Laurent Robert Borotra was a French tennis champion. He was one of the "Four Musketeers" from his country who dominated tennis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Borotra was imprisoned in Itter Castle during the latter years of World War II and subsequently fought in the Battle for Castle Itter.
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Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber
- Occupations
- journalistwriterpolitician
- Biography
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Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, often referred to as JJSS, was a French journalist and politician. He co-founded L'Express in 1953 with Françoise Giroud, and then went on to become president of the Radical Party in 1971. He oversaw its transition to the center-right, the party being thereafter known as Parti radical valoisien. He tried to found in 1972 the Reforming Movement with Christian Democrat Jean Lecanuet, with whom he supported Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's conservative candidature to the 1974 presidential election.
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Bruno Mégret
- Occupations
- officialpolitician
- Biography
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Bruno Mégret is a French former nationalist politician. He was the leader of the Mouvement National Républicain political party, but retired in 2008 from all political action.
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Jean-Marc Germain
- Occupations
- officialpolitician
- Biography
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Jean-Marc Germain is a French politician, member of the Socialist Party. He is the cabinet director of Martine Aubry in Socialist Party. Germain is also the husband of Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris.
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Urbain Le Verrier
- Occupations
- writermeteorologistpoliticianastronomermathematician
- Biography
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Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier was a French astronomer and mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and is best known for predicting the existence and position of Neptune using only mathematics.
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Frédéric Oudéa
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1981-1984
- Occupations
- banker
- Biography
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Frédéric Oudéa is a French businessmann who was CEO of Société Générale and as president of the European Banking Federation.
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Gérard Mourou
- Occupations
- university teacherphysicist
- Biography
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Gérard Albert Mourou is a French scientist and pioneer in the field of electrical engineering and lasers. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, along with Donna Strickland, for the invention of chirped pulse amplification, a technique later used to create ultrashort-pulse, very high-intensity (petawatt) laser pulses.
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Trần Đại Nghĩa
- Occupations
- politicianengineermilitary engineer
- Biography
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Trần Đại Nghĩa was a Vietnamese scientist, military engineer, and prominent figure in the defense industry of Vietnam. He was a major-general and an academician. He was awarded the Order of Ho Chi Minh and named a Hero of Labor. He was elected as an Academician to the former USSR Academy of Sciences.
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Louis-Eugène Cavaignac
- Occupations
- military officerpolitician
- Biography
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Louis-Eugène Cavaignac was a French general and politician who served as head of the executive power of France between June and December 1848, during the French Second Republic.
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Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1838
- Occupations
- academicmineralogistgeologistchemist
- Biography
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Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois was a French geologist and mineralogist who was the first to arrange the chemical elements in order of atomic weights, doing so in 1862. De Chancourtois only published his paper, but did not publish his actual graph with the irregular arrangement. Although his publication was significant, it was ignored by chemists as it was written in terms of geology. It was Dmitri Mendeleev's table published in 1869 that became most recognized. De Chancourtois was also a professor of mine surveying, and later geology at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. He also was the Inspector of Mines in Paris, and was widely responsible for implementing many mine safety regulations and laws during the time.
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Maurice Allais
- Occupations
- physicistengineerresearchereconomist
- Biography
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Maurice Félix Charles Allais was a French physicist and economist, the 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources", along with John Hicks (Value and Capital, 1939) and Paul Samuelson (The Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947), to neoclassical synthesis. They formalize the self-regulation of markets, which Keynes refuted but reiterated some of Allais's ideas.
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Petrache Poenaru
- Occupations
- physicistengineermathematician
- Biography
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Petrache Poenaru was a Romanian inventor.
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Albert Jacquard
- Occupations
- biologistgeneticistphilosopheressayist
- Biography
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Albert Jacquard was a French geneticist, popularizer of science and essayist.
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Henry Louis Le Châtelier
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1869-1870
- Occupations
- chemistengineerprofessor
- Biography
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Henry Louis Le Chatelier was a French chemist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He devised Le Chatelier's principle, used by chemists and chemical engineers to predict the effect a changing condition has on a system in chemical equilibrium.
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François Villeroy de Galhau
- Occupations
- officialeconomistinternational forum participantbusinessperson
- Biography
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François Villeroy de Galhau is a French civil servant and banker serving as Governor of the Bank of France and ex officio President of the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority since 2015.
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Charles Hermite
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1841-1842
- Occupations
- senior lecturermathematicianuniversity teacherprofesseur des universités
- Biography
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Charles Hermite FRS FRSE MIAS (24 December 1822 – 14 January 1901) was a French mathematician who did research concerning number theory, quadratic forms, invariant theory, orthogonal polynomials, elliptic functions, and algebra.
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Salvador de Madariaga
- Occupations
- novelistacademicessayistliterary criticengineer
- Biography
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Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo was an "eminent liberal" Spanish diplomat, writer, historian, and pacifist, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize and awarded the Charlemagne Prize in 1973.
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Ion I. C. Brătianu
- Occupations
- railway engineerpoliticiancivil engineerdiplomat
- Biography
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Ion Ionel Constantin Brătianu was a Romanian politician, leader of the National Liberal Party (PNL), Prime Minister of Romania for five terms, and Foreign Minister on several occasions; he was the eldest son of statesman and PNL leader Ion Brătianu, the brother of Vintilă and Dinu Brătianu, and the father of Gheorghe I. Brătianu. Ion I. C. Brătianu's political activities after World War I, including part of his third and fourth term, saw the unification of the Old Romanian Kingdom with Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia (see: Greater Romania). In 1923, he was elected an honorary member of the Romanian Academy.
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Guillaume Faury
- Occupations
- aerospace engineerinternational forum participant
- Biography
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Guillaume Faury is a French engineer and businessman. He is the current chief executive officer (CEO) at the aerospace corporation Airbus SE and he also serves as the chairman of its civil aircraft division, Airbus SAS.
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Roland Lescure
- Occupations
- economistpolitician
- Biography
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Roland Lescure is a French banker and politician who has served as Minister Delegate for Industry in the governments of successive Prime Ministers Élisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal since 2022.
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Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1808-1810
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teachercivil engineerengineermathematician
- Biography
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Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis was a French mathematician, mechanical engineer and scientist. He is best known for his work on the supplementary forces that are detected in a rotating frame of reference, leading to the Coriolis effect. He was the first to apply the term travail (translated as "work") for the transfer of energy by a force acting through a distance, and he prefixed the factor ½ to Leibniz's concept of vis viva, thus specifying today's kinetic energy.
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Gérard Araud
- Occupations
- diplomat
- Biography
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Gérard Araud is a retired French diplomat who served as Ambassador of France to the United States from 2014 to 2019. He previously served as Director General for Political and Security Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006–2009) and France's permanent representative to the United Nations (2009–2014).
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Jean-Bernard Lévy
- Occupations
- engineerbusinessperson
- Biography
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Jean-Bernard Lévy is a French businessman, and the CEO and chairman of EDF.
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Claude-Louis Navier
- Occupations
- economistengineer of the French Corps of Bridges and Roadsphysicistengineercivil engineer
- Biography
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Claude-Louis Navier was a French mechanical engineer, affiliated with the French government, and a physicist who specialized in continuum mechanics.
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Paul Bert
- Occupations
- university teacherentomologistofficialgovernorphysician
- Biography
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Paul Bert was a French zoologist, physiologist and politician. He is sometimes given the sobriquet "Father of Aviation Medicine".
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Camille Jordan
- Occupations
- engineermathematicianuniversity teacherprofessor
- Biography
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Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan was a French mathematician, known both for his foundational work in group theory and for his influential Cours d'analyse.
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Michel Virlogeux
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1965-1967
- Occupations
- expertuniversity teachercivil engineerstructural engineer
- Biography
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Michel Virlogeux FREng CorrFRSE is a French structural engineer and bridge specialist.
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Caroline Aigle
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1994-1997
- Occupations
- engineeraerospace engineertriathletefighter pilot
- Biography
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Commandant Caroline Aigle was a French aviator who achieved a historical first when, at the age of 25, she became the first woman fighter pilot in the French Air Force. Her promising military career was cut short by death from cancer seven years later. She was posthumously awarded the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Aeronautics Medal).
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Jean-Baptiste Biot
- Occupations
- mathematicianprofessorphysicistcivil engineerastronomer
- Biography
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Jean-Baptiste Biot was a French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who co-discovered the Biot–Savart law of magnetostatics with Félix Savart, established the reality of meteorites, made an early balloon flight, and studied the polarization of light.
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Paul Andreu
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1958-1961
- Occupations
- writerpaintercivil engineerengineerarchitect
- Biography
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Paul Andreu was a French architect, known for his designs of multiple airports such as Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and multiple prestigious projects in China, including the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing.
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Louis Faidherbe
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1838-1840
- Occupations
- politicianmilitary officercolonial administrator
- Biography
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Louis Léon César Faidherbe was a French general and colonial administrator. He created the Senegalese Tirailleurs when he was governor of Senegal.
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Guillaume Henri Dufour
- Occupations
- politicianmilitary personnelcivil engineerurban plannercartographer
- Biography
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Guillaume Henri Dufour was a Swiss military officer, structural engineer and topographer. He served under Napoleon I and held the Swiss office of General four times in his career, firstly in 1847 when he led the Swiss Confederation forces to victory against the Sonderbund. In 1864 Dufour presided over the First Geneva Convention which established the International Red Cross. He was founder and president (1838 to 1865) of the Swiss Federal Office of Topography.
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Eugène Freyssinet
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1899-1902
- Occupations
- engineer of the French Corps of Bridges and Roadsengineercivil engineerstructural engineer
- Biography
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Eugène Freyssinet was a French structural and civil engineer. He was the major pioneer of prestressed concrete.
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Charles Koechlin
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1887
- Occupations
- musicologistcomposerwritermusic teacher
- Biography
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Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin, commonly known as Charles Koechlin, was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. Among his better known works is Les Heures persanes, a set of piano pieces based on the novel Vers Ispahan by Pierre Loti and The Seven Stars Symphony, a 7 movement symphony where each movement is themed around a different film star (all Silent era stars) who were popular at the time of the piece's writing (1933).
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Alfred Sauvy
- Occupations
- sociologistanthropologistdemographerprofessoreconomist
- Biography
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Alfred Sauvy was a demographer, anthropologist and historian of the French economy. Sauvy coined the term Third World ("Tiers Monde") in reference to countries that were unaligned with either the Western bloc or the Eastern bloc during the Cold War.
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Hervé Mariton
- Occupations
- Grands corps de l'Etatcadres de la fonction publiquepolitician
- Biography
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Hervé Marie David Mariton is French politician serving as Mayor of Crest since 1995. A member of The Republicans, he was elected to the National Assembly for the third constituency of Drôme from 1993 to 1997 and again from 2002 until 2017, with a brief interruption in 2007, when he was appointed Minister of the Overseas by President Jacques Chirac in the last weeks of his second term, replacing François Baroin, who became Minister of the Interior.
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Chakib Benmoussaa
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1976-1979
- Occupations
- diplomatpoliticianengineer
- Biography
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Chakib Benmoussa is a Moroccan diplomat and politician. He previously served as the interior minister of Morocco and has been the lead negotiator for the Moroccan side in the Western Sahara conflict. Since December 2012, he is serving as the Moroccan ambassador to France. On October 7,2021 he was appointed as the education and sports minister.
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Jacques De Peretti
- Occupations
- businesspersonentrepreneur
- Biography
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Claude Bébéar is a French businessman. He is the former CEO of AXA.
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Fulgence Bienvenüe
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1870-1872
- Occupations
- engineerarchitectcivil engineerengineer of the French Corps of Bridges and Roads
- Biography
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Fulgence Bienvenüe was a French civil engineer, best known for his role in the construction of the Paris Métro, and has been called "Le Père du Métro" (Father of the Metro).
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Antoine Compagnon
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1970-1973
- Occupations
- writerliterary criticteacher
- Biography
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Antoine Compagnon is a Professor of French Literature at Collège de France, Paris (2006–), and the Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York City (1985–).
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Louis Pouzin
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1950-1953
- Occupations
- engineercomputer scientist
- Biography
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Louis Pouzin is a French computer scientist. He designed a pioneering packet communications network, CYCLADES that was the first to implement the end-to-end principle, which became fundamental to the design of the Internet.
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Michel Chasles
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1812
- Occupations
- mathematicianphysicistuniversity teachergeometerhistorian of mathematics
- Biography
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Michel Floréal Chasles was a French mathematician.
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Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1815-1818
- Occupations
- university teacherphysicistengineer
- Biography
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Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron was a French engineer and physicist, one of the founders of thermodynamics.
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Lionel Stoléru
- Occupations
- conductorengineereconomistpolitician
- Biography
-
Lionel Guy Stoléru was a French politician and civil servant. He was also an orchestra founder and conductor.
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Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play
- Occupations
- engineereconomistpoliticiansociologist
- Biography
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Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play was a French engineer, sociologist and economist.
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André Turcat
- Occupations
- politicianaircraft pilottest pilot
- Biography
-
Major André Édouard Turcat was a French Air Force pilot and test pilot celebrated for flying the first prototype of Concorde for its maiden flight.
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Bertrand Meyer
- Occupations
- engineercomputer scientist
- Biography
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Bertrand Meyer is a French academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language and the idea of design by contract.
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Xavier Huillard
- Occupations
- business executiveengineer
- Biography
-
Xavier Huillard is a French business executive, and the chairman and CEO of Vinci SA. He has been CEO since 2006, and chairman since 2010.
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Jean-Christophe Yoccoz
- Occupations
- chess playeruniversity teachermathematician
- Biography
-
Jean-Christophe Yoccoz 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.
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Paul Quilès
- Occupations
- politicianengineer
- Biography
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Paul Quilès was a French Socialist politician.
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Antonin Baudry
- Occupations
- comics artistfilm directorscreenwriterdiplomat
- Biography
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Antonin Baudry also known by the writing pseudonym Abel Lanzac, is a French diplomat specializing in cultural affairs, comic book author, screenwriter, and film director.
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Fabienne Keller
- Occupations
- bankerpolitician
- Biography
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Fabienne Keller is a French politician who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. She was previously the mayor (UDF) of Strasbourg, France, from March 2001 to March 2008.
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Jean-François Clervoy
- Occupations
- aerospace engineerastronautengineer
- Biography
-
Jean-François André Clervoy is a French engineer and a CNES and ESA astronaut. He is a veteran of three NASA Space Shuttle missions.
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Mirza Melkum Khan
- Occupations
- diplomatopinion journalistSeraphic Doctor
- Biography
-
Mirza Melkum Khan, also spelled as Melkum Khan, was an Iranian modernist writer, diplomat, and publicist. He is known for his social reform efforts, as well as for being the first Christian to adopt the title of 'Mirza' in Persian. He is considered one of the fathers of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.
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Patrick Kron
- Occupations
- business executiveengineerinternational forum participant
- Biography
-
Patrick Kron was the chairman and chief executive (Président-directeur général) of the French engineering conglomerate Alstom. Alstom is most well known for its TGV trains, and is headquartered at Saint-Ouen.
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Abdelouafi Laftit
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1989
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Abdelouafi Laftit is a Moroccan politician, currently serving as Minister of the Interior since 5 April 2017.
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Paul Pierre Lévy
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1904-1906
- Occupations
- university teacherengineermathematician
- Biography
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Paul Pierre Lévy was a French mathematician who was active especially in probability theory, introducing fundamental concepts such as local time, stable distributions and characteristic functions. Lévy processes, Lévy flights, Lévy measures, Lévy's constant, the Lévy distribution, the Lévy area, the Lévy arcsine law, and the fractal Lévy C curve are named after him.
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Henry Darcy
- Occupations
- physicisthydraulic engineercivil engineerspeleologistengineer
- Biography
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Henry Philibert Gaspard Darcy was a French engineer who made several important contributions to hydraulics, including Darcy’s law for flow in porous media.
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Louis Vicat
- Enrolled in Polytechnic School
- Studied in 1804-1806
- Occupations
- engineer of the French Corps of Bridges and Roadsengineer
- Biography
-
Louis Vicat was a French engineer.
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Jean-Victor Poncelet
- Occupations
- professormilitary engineerphysicistengineerpolitician
- Biography
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Jean-Victor Poncelet was a French engineer and mathematician who served most notably as the Commanding General of the École Polytechnique. He is considered a reviver of projective geometry, and his work Traité des propriétés projectives des figures is considered the first definitive text on the subject since Gérard Desargues' work on it in the 17th century. He later wrote an introduction to it: Applications d'analyse et de géométrie.
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Ernest Malinowski
- Occupations
- engineer
- Biography
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Adam Stanisław Hipolit Ernest Nepomucen Malinowski was a Polish civil engineer best known for constructing the world's highest railway at the time, the Ferrovias Central, in the Peruvian Andes between 1871–1876. He participated in the Battle of Callao in 1866 and was also a corresponding member of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil Society in Switzerland.
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Hervé Le Bras
- Occupations
- historiandemographermathematician
- Biography
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Hervé Le Bras is a French demographer and historian.
