Didier Lombard (born 27 February 1942) is a French businessman. Between February 2005 and March 2010 he was chairman and CEO of France Télécom. In 2010 he resigned as CEO, retaining the chairmanship. Since 2012, he has been under indictment for criminal acts of "moral harassment" (harcèlement moral) for abusive human resource policies during his leadership at France Télécom alleged to have caused a number of suicides, leading to a criminal trial in May 2019.
Patrick Kron (born 26 September 1953) 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.
Noël Forgeard (born 8 December 1946 in La Ferté-Gaucher) is a French industrialist and former joint CEO of EADS.
Jean Bergougnoux (15 October 1939 – 3 September 2023) was a French businessman. He served as Director-General of Électricité de France (EDF) from 1987 to 1994 and was President of the SNCF from 1994 to 1995.
Jean-Louis Beffa (born 11 August 1941 in Nice, France) is a French businessman. He was Chairman and CEO of Saint-Gobain from 1986 to 2007, Chairman until 2010 and is Honorary Chairman of the board of Saint-Gobain. He is a former member of the Saint-Simon Foundation and was on the boards of BNP Paribas, GDF Suez, Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, Siemens AG, Le Monde S.A., Société Editrice du Monde S.A., and Le Monde Partenaires SAS.
In 2000, he and Nobel economist Robert Solow co-founded the Saint-Gobain Centre for Economic Studies, later becoming the Cournot Centre. They went on to create the Cournot Foundation in 2010 under the aegis of the public charity Fondation de France, currently serving as co-presidents.
Jean-Paul Béchat (September 2, 1942 – November 22, 2014) was a French engineer. He was the CEO of Snecma then Safran until 2007.
Jean Peyrelevade (born 24 October 1939) is a senior French center-left politician and business leader.
Michel Pébereau (born 23 January 1942) is a French businessman. He is the chairman of Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) and its former CEO. He graduated from the École Polytechnique in 1965 and the École nationale d'administration in 1967.
Édouard Brézin (French: [bʁezɛ̃]; born 1 December 1938 Paris) is a French theoretical physicist. He is professor at Université Paris 6, working at the laboratory for theoretical physics (LPT) of the École Normale Supérieure since 1986.
Fulgence Bienvenüe (French pronunciation: [fylʒɑ̃s bjɛ̃v(ə)ny]; 27 January 1852 – 3 August 1936) 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).: 162 A native of Uzel in Brittany, and the son of a notary, in 1872 Bienvenüe graduated from the École Polytechnique as a civil engineer: 150 and the same year he began working for the Department of Bridges and Roads at Alençon.: 150 His first assignment was the construction of new railway lines in the Mayenne area, in the course of which his left arm had to be amputated after being crushed in a construction accident.
In 1886, Bienvenüe moved on to Paris to design and supervise the construction of aqueducts for the city, drawing water from the rivers Aube and Loire.: 151 Next, he built a cable railway near the Place de la République and created the park of Buttes-Chaumont.: 151 In 1891, he was appointed as Engineer-in-Chief for Bridges and Roads, the most prestigious engineering job in France.: 151 Paris city officials selected Bienvenüe to become chief engineer for the Paris Métro in 1896. He designed a special way of building new tunnels which allowed the swift repaving of the roads above; this involved (among other things) building the crown of the tunnel first and the floor last, the reverse of the usual method at that time.: 151, 162 Bienvenüe has the credit for the mostly swift and relatively uneventful construction of the Métro through the difficult and heterogenous Parisian soils and rocks.: 150–1, 162 He came up with the idea of freezing wet and unstable soil in order to permit the drilling of tunnels. He was to supervise the Paris Metro construction for more than three decades, finally retiring on 6 December 1932.
Bienvenüe's construction of the Métro was widely praised and has been described admiringly as a work "worthy of the Romans".: 160, 162 He eventually accumulated many honors for his engineering accomplishments, including the Grand Prix Berger of the Academy of Arts and Sciences (1909) and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor (1929).: 160 On 30 June 1933, the Avenue du Maine station on the Metro was renamed Bienvenüe in his honor. The naming ceremony took place in his presence; there was a last-minute scramble to repaint the station's new nameboards when it was discovered that the unusual diaeresis in his name had been omitted, making it the French word for "welcome". In 1942 the station was linked to the adjacent Montparnasse station, forming a single station named Montparnasse-Bienvenüe.
Bienvenüe was buried in 1936 at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
Lycée Fulgence Bienvenüe high school in Loudéac, Brittany is named after Bienvenüe.