Bernard d'Espagnat (22 August 1921 – 1 August 2015) was a French theoretical physicist, philosopher of science, and author, best known for his work on the nature of reality. Wigner-d'Espagnat inequality is partially named after him.
Quote: "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."
Alain Lipietz (born September 19, 1947 as Alain Guy Lipiec) is a French engineer, economist and politician, a former Member of the European Parliament, and a member of the French Green Party. He has, however, been suspended from the party since 25 March 2014 and is an elected local politician in Val de Bièvre, Paris, France.
Azouz Begag (Arabic: عزوز بقاق) (born 5 February 1957) is a French writer, politician and researcher in economics and sociology at the CNRS. He was the delegate minister for equal opportunities of France in the government of French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) till 5 April 2007. He resigned to support the moderate centrist candidate François Bayrou, one of the two UMP ministers to do so.
Before becoming minister, Begag was decorated and made Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite and Knight of the Legion of Honor.
Alain Etchegoyen (6 November 1951 in Lille – 9 April 2007 in Le Mans), was a philosopher and novelist. He was the last Plan Commissionner before that Commission was abrogated. He wrote some twenty books, essays and novels.
A former student of l'École Normale Supérieure, he was a professor in classes prépas at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and in a professional lycée in Hauts-de-Seine.
Jean-Pierre Luminet (born 3 June 1951) is a French astrophysicist, specializing in black holes and cosmology. He is an emeritus research director at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique). Luminet is a member of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) and Laboratoire Univers et Théories (LUTH) of the Paris-Meudon Observatory, and is a visiting scientist at the Centre de Physique Théorique (CPT) in Marseilles. He is also a writer and poet.
Luminet has been awarded several prizes on account of his work in pure science and science communication, including the Georges Lemaître Prize (1999) in recognition of his work in cosmology. In November 2021, he received the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science. He serves on the editorial board of Inference: The International Review of Science.The asteroid 5523 Luminet, discovered in 1991 at Palomar Observatory, was named after him.Luminet has published fifteen science books, seven historical novels, TV documentaries, and six poetry collections. He is an artist, an engraver, a sculptor, and a musician. During his music career, he has collaborated with composers such as Gérard Grisey and Hèctor Parra. Some of Luminet's literary works have been translated into other languages, such as Chinese, Korean, Bengali, German, Lithuanian, Greek, Italian or Spanish.