Roger Balian (born 18 January 1933) is a French-Armenian physicist who has worked on quantum field theory, quantum thermodynamics, and theory of measurement.
Balian is a member of French Académie des sciences (Academy of Sciences). His important work includes the Balian-Low theorem. He teaches statistical physics at the École Polytechnique.
Louis-Paul Cailletet (21 September 1832 – 5 January 1913) was a French physicist and inventor.
Henry Louis Le Chatelier (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi lwi lə ʃɑtəlje]; 8 October 1850 – 17 September 1936) 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.
Anne Lauvergeon (born 2 August 1959) is a French businesswoman who served as CEO of Areva from 2001 until 2011. According to The Wall Street Journal, she is known internationally as one of the most prominent defenders of nuclear power.
Jacques José Mardoché Attali (French pronunciation: [ʒak atali]; born 1 November 1943) is a French economic and social theorist, writer, political adviser and senior civil servant.
A very prolific writer, Attali published 86 books in 54 years, between 1969 and 2023.
Attali served as a counselor to President François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1991, and was the first head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1991 to 1993. In 1997, upon the request of education minister Claude Allègre, he proposed a reform of the higher education degrees system. From 2008 to 2010, he led the government committee on how to ignite the growth of the French economy, under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Attali co-founded the European program EUREKA, dedicated to the development of new technologies. He also founded the non-profit organization PlaNet Finance, now called Positive Planet, and is the head of Attali & Associates (A&A), an international consultancy firm on strategy, corporate finance and venture capital. Interested in the arts, he has been nominated to serve on the board of the Musée d’Orsay. He has published more than fifty books, including Verbatim (1981), Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), Labyrinth in Culture and Society: Pathways to Wisdom (1999), and A Brief History of the Future (2006).
In 2009, Foreign Policy called him as one of the top 100 "global thinkers" in the world.
Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan (French: [ʒɔʁdɑ̃]; 5 January 1838 – 22 January 1922) was a French mathematician, known both for his foundational work in group theory and for his influential Cours d'analyse.
Georges Besse (25 December 1927 – 17 November 1986) was a French businessman who helped lead several large state-controlled companies. He was assassinated outside his Paris home by the armed group Action directe while he was the CEO of car manufacturer Renault.