2002 deaths

Pierre Robert Rodolphe Peugeot (1932-2002) was a French heir and business executive.

Marcel Hansenne (January 24, 1917 – March 22, 2002) was a French middle distance runner, who won the bronze medal at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London over 800 m in a time of 1:49.8 min. The race was won by Mal Whitfield. Hansenne also equalled Rune Gustafsson's 1000 m world record of 2:21.4 in Gothenburg in 1948. Hansenne was born in Tourcoing.

Pierre Aigrain (28 September 1924 – 30 October 2002) was a French physicist and Secretary of Research in the French Academy of Sciences.

Former French secret service chief Paul Paillole was born in the Breton town of Rennes on 18 November 1905. He died on 15 October 2002 in the Bichat hospital in Paris. He is remembered essentially for his role organizing the arrest of German intelligence agents in France after the defeat of 1940 but his activity during this period has been the subject of controversy.

Pierre Siniac (1928–2002) received the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1981 for three of his works, including Aime le Maudit.
Ferdinaud Céline was published in French in 1997 to great acclaim. Translated to English by Jordan Stump, it was published under the title The Collaborators. Pierre Bayard discussed it in Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus? (How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read).A story about the Paris Métro Line 8 inspired his novel Le Crime du dernier métro, published in 2001.

Pierre Fédida (30 October 1934, Lyon – 1 November 2002, Paris) was a French psychoanalyst, who studied under Gilles Deleuze.

Michel Poniatowski (16 May 1922 – 15 January 2002) was a French politician, member of a legitimized line of Poland's princely Poniatowski family. He was a founder of the Independent Republicans and a part of the administration for President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Poniatowski served as Minister of Health from 1973 to 1974 and Minister of the Interior in the Giscard d'Estaing government from 1974 to 1977. He was a founder and honorary president of the Union for French Democracy (Union pour la Démocratie Française, UDF).

Edna Coll Pujals (July 24, 1906 – November 19, 2002) was a Puerto Rican educator and author. She was president of the Society of Puerto Rican Authors in San Juan. Coll was also the founder of the Academy of Fine Arts in Puerto Rico.

Georges Gorse (15 February 1915 – 17 March 2002) was a French politician and diplomat.
Born in Cahors, he qualified in 1939 as a professor at the University of Cairo. During World War II he joined Charles de Gaulle and the Free French as Director of Information, served on the Provisional Consultative Assembly.
After the war he was elected to represent the Vendée in the French National Assembly from 1946 to 1951, and then the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) from 1951 onwards. In 1957, Guy Mollet made him an Ambassador to Algeria, then he was elected as Gaullist representative which he held from 1967 to 1997.During the events of May 1968, having attended a private political meeting as Minister of Information, he broke the news to the French media of de Gaulle's now notorious statement "reform yes, but 'chienlit, no".Gorse held a wide range of positions of state:

Under-secretary of State for Muslim Affairs 1946 to 1947
Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1949 to 1950
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1961 to 1962
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1962
Minister for Co-operation, 1962
Ambassador to Algeria, 1963 to 1967
Minister of Labour, 1973 to 1974
Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt, 1971 to 1991

Marco Siffredi (22 May 1979 – 8 September 2002) was a French snowboarder and mountaineer who hailed from a climbing family; his father was a mountain guide, and his older brother Pierre had died in an avalanche in their hometown of Chamonix, France. Siffredi was the first to descend Mount Everest on a snowboard, completing this feat in 2001 via the Norton Couloir. In 2002, he disappeared after making his second Everest summit, while attempting to snowboard the Hornbein Couloir; his body has never been found.