\u00c9cole Polytechnique alumni

Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing (UK: ZHIH-skar dess-TÃ(N), US: zhih-SKAR-, French: [valeʁi ʁəne maʁi ʒɔʁʒ ʒiskaʁ dɛstɛ̃] ; 2 February 1926 – 2 December 2020), also known as Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981.After serving as Minister of Finance under prime ministers Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Pierre Messmer, Giscard d'Estaing won the presidential election of 1974 with 50.8% of the vote against François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party. His tenure was marked by a more liberal attitude on social issues—such as divorce, contraception and abortion—and by attempts to modernise the country and the office of the presidency, notably overseeing such far-reaching infrastructure projects as the TGV and the turn towards reliance on nuclear power as France's main energy source. Giscard d'Estaing launched the Grande Arche, Musée d'Orsay, Arab World Institute and Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie projects in the Paris region, later included in the Grands Projets of François Mitterrand. He promoted liberalisation of trade. However, his popularity suffered from the economic downturn that followed the 1973 energy crisis, marking the end of the "Trente Glorieuses" (thirty "glorious" years of prosperity after 1945). He imposed austerity budgets, and allowed unemployment to rise in order to avoid deficits. Giscard d'Estaing in the centre faced political opposition from both sides of the spectrum: from the newly unified left under Mitterrand and a rising Jacques Chirac, who resurrected Gaullism on a right-wing opposition line. In 1981, despite a high approval rating, he was defeated in a runoff against Mitterrand, with 48.2% of the vote.
As president, Giscard d'Estaing promoted cooperation among the European nations, especially in tandem with West Germany. As a former president, he was a member of the Constitutional Council. He also served as president of the Regional Council of Auvergne from 1986 to 2004. Involved with the process of European integration, he notably presided over the Convention on the Future of Europe that drafted the ill-fated Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. In 2003, he was elected to the Académie Française, taking the seat that his friend and former president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor had held. He died at the age of 94, and is the longest-lived French president in history.

Antoine Henri Becquerel (; French pronunciation: [ɑ̃twan ɑ̃ʁi bɛkʁɛl]; 15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) 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.

Émile Nouguier (17 February 1840 – 23 November 1897) was a French civil engineer and architect. He is famous for co-designing the Eiffel Tower, built 1887–1889 for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, France, the Garabit viaduct, the highest in the world at the time, near Ruynes-en-Margeride, Cantal, France, and the Faidherbe Bridge over the Sénégal River in Senegal.
In 1861 he attended and graduated the École Polytechnique in Paris, in 1862 he joined the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris from which he graduated in 1865 with the title of mining construction engineer.

Count Antoine Hector Thésée Treuille de Beaulieu (7 May 1809 – 24 July 1885) was a French General of the 19th century, who developed the concept of rifled guns in the French Army. He studied the subject of rifling between 1840, particularly in the famous Manufacture d'armes de Châtellerault, and 1852. Following a request by Napoleon III in 1854 to develop such a weapon, the de Beaulieu system was adopted by the French Army. It consisted in cutting six grooves inside the bore of a muzzle-loading cannon, and to use shells equipped with six lugs which would engage the grooves. This development was paralleled by that of the Armstrong gun in Great Britain (adopted in 1858 by the British Army).
About the same time he developed a pinfire falling-block breech-loading carbine (mousqueton) for the Cent-gardes Squadron which was a bit ahead of its time in using a metallic cartridge and is very unusual (for a single-shot weapon) in that it fires from an open bolt.These developments led to the introduction of the La Hitte system in 1858, a fully integrated system of muzzle-loading rifled guns. The Beaulieu 4-pounder rifled field-gun was adopted by the French Army in 1858, where it replaced the canon-obusier de 12, a smoothbore cannon using shells which was much less accurate and shorter-ranged.The Beaulieu rifled artillery was first used in Algeria, and then in the Franco-Austrian War in Italy in 1859.In 1842 he invented a prototype of the modern muzzle brake and had it tested in 1862.

François Hussenot (22 March 1912 – 16 May 1951) was a French engineer, credited with the invention of one of the early forms of the flight data recorder.
He attended the École polytechnique from 1930 to 1932. After graduation, he attended two other schools: the Ecole Militaire d'Application de l'Aéronautique in Versailles, where he obtained his pilot license, and the Ecole Supérieure d'Aéronautique (better known as Supaéro), which he graduated in 1935 with a degree in aeronautical engineering.
His career began at the Centre d'Essais de Matériels Aériens (CEMA) of Villacoublay, an aircraft test center, in 1935. In July of that year, he married Yvonne. In 1936, he was sent to Saint-Raphaël, in southern France, to take part in the testing of heavy seaplanes. In 1941, he moved to the Centre d'Essais en Vol de Marignane, where he made his early attempts at constructing a flight data recorder. Unlike modern recorders, Hussenot's early models had the particularity of storing the information not on a magnetic band, but on an eight meter long by 88 mm wide photographic film, scrolling in front of a thin spot of light deviated by a mirror to represent the data. The initials HB stood for Hussenot and Beaudouin, the name of an early associate who helped Hussenot in developing the device during World War II. Those flight recorders were also known as "Hussenographs".
In July 1945, Hussenot was appointed as an engineer at the Brétigny-sur-Orge flight test center (Centre d'Essais en Vol de Brétigny-sur-Orge) as the director of the Methods and Try-Outs service (Service des Méthodes et Essais). In 1946, with Maurice Cambois and Charles Cabaret, he created the Ecole du Personnel Navigant (E.P.N.) school, which later became the EPNER (Ecole du Personnel Navigant d'Essais et de Réception). As of today, the EPNER is one of only six test pilot schools in the world, together with the Empire Test Pilots' School, the United States Air Force Test Pilot School and the United States Naval Test Pilot School, the National Test Pilot School, and the Indian Air Force Test Pilots School.
In 1947 Hussenot founded the SFIM (Société Française des Instruments de Mesure) with his associate Marcel Ramolfo, to market his flight data recorder. The SFIM had a successful story of its own, selling many successful data recording devices, before diversifying. The company is today part of the Safran group.
In 1948, Hussenot became professor at SUPAERO. In the same year, he was appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, and was awarded the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Medal of Aeronautics) in recognition for his services.
François Hussenot died in 1951, in a plane crash between Marignane and Mont-de-Marsan.

Patrick Drahi (French pronunciation: [patʁik dʁai]; Arabic: باتريك دراحي; Hebrew: פטריק דרהי; born 20 August 1963) 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.

Georges Glasser (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ glaːse]; 24 August 1907 – January 2002) was a French tennis player, corporate executive and president of the Tennis Club de Paris. As a player, he was particularly successful in mixed doubles claiming several titles during his career. He was ranked the 8th among the top French players in 1932.

Maurice Lévy (February 28, 1838, in Ribeauvillé – September 30, 1910, in Paris) was a French engineer and member of the Institut de France.
Lévy was born in Ribeauvillé in Alsace. Educated at the École Polytechnique, where he was a student of Adhémar Jean Claude Barré de Saint-Venant, and the École des Ponts et Chaussées, he became an engineer in 1863. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), he was entrusted by the Government of National Defense with the control of part of the artillery. During the next decade he held several educational positions, becoming professor at the École Centrale in 1875, member of the commission of the geodetic survey of France in 1879, and professor at the Collège de France in 1885.

Clément Georges Lemoine (16 January 1841 in Tonnerre – 13 November 1922 in Paris) was a French chemist and hydrologist. He was the father of geologist Paul Lemoine (1878–1940).
He studied at the École Polytechnique and the École des ponts et chaussées, obtaining a doctorate in physical sciences in 1865. For many years he was associated with the École Polytechnique in Paris, where he ultimately served as a professor of chemistry from 1898 to 1911.In 1866 he began work as an engineer in charge of hydrometric services in the Seine Basin. In 1881 he was appointed chief engineer of bridges and roads, and in 1901, was named inspector general of bridges and roads. He is credited with organizing a flood warning service throughout France.As a chemist he discovered phosphorus sesquisulfide, a compound that will later be used in the manufacture of matches. He continued research on the allotropic transformation of phosphorus, and was also the author of works on chemical equilibria.In 1899 he became a member of the Académie des sciences (chemistry section), of which in 1921, he was named its president.

Paul-Auguste-Ernest Laugier (22 December 1812, in Paris – 5 April 1872) was a French astronomer, one of two French astronomers referred to as M. Laugier.