Léon Levavasseur (8 January 1863 – 26 February 1922) was a French powerplant engineer, aircraft designer and inventor. His innovations included the V8 engine, direct fuel injection, and liquid engine cooling. Primarily associated with the Antoinette company, he continued to experiment with aircraft design after the company went bankrupt.
Robert Albert Charles Esnault-Pelterie (8 November 1881 – 6 December 1957) was a French aircraft designer and spaceflight theorist. He is referred to as being one of the founders of modern rocketry and astronautics, along with the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Germans Hermann Oberth, Wernher Von Braun and the American Robert H. Goddard.
Albert Irénée Caquot (1 July 1881 – 28 November 1976) was a French engineer. He received the “Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France)” (military honor) and was Grand-croix of the Légion d’Honneur (1951). In 1962, he was awarded the Wilhelm Exner Medal. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences from 1934 until his death in 1976.
Adrienne Bolland, born Boland, (25 November 1895 – 18 March 1975) was a French test pilot. She was the first woman to fly over the Andes between Chile and Argentina. She was later described as "France's most accomplished female aviator", setting a woman's record for loops done in an hour. The French government eventually recognized her with the Legion of Honor and other awards. Since her death, she has been commemorated with a postage stamp of Argentina.
Born into a large family outside Paris, she became a pilot in her twenties to pay off gambling debts. An early crossing of the English Channel led René Caudron, her employer, to send her to South America to demonstrate his planes, where she made her Andes crossing, assisted, she later said, by a tip relayed to her from a medium. Later in her life she became involved in leftist political causes, and eventually became part of the French Resistance.
Henrich Focke (8 October 1890 – 25 February 1979) was a German aviation pioneer from Bremen and also a co-founder of the Focke-Wulf company. He is best known as the inventor of the Fw 61, the first successful German helicopter.
