20th-century French chemists

Bertrand Goldschmidt (2 November 1912 – 11 June 2002) was a French chemist. He is considered one of the fathers of the French atomic bomb, which was tested for the first time in 1960 in the nuclear test Gerboise Bleue.

Paul Ulrich Villard (28 September 1860 – 13 January 1934) was a French chemist and physicist. He discovered gamma rays in 1900 while studying the radiation emanating from radium.

Charles Achille Müntz (10 August 1846 – 20 February 1917) was a French agricultural chemist.

Charles-Victor Mauguin (French: [ʃaʁl.vik.tɔʁ mo.gɛ̃]; 19 September 1878 – 25 April 1958), more often Charles Mauguin, was a French mineralogist and crystallographer. He and Carl Hermann invented an international standard notation for crystallographic groups called Hermann–Mauguin notation (also sometimes called international notation).

Arthème Camille Matignon (French pronunciation: [kamij matiɲɔ̃]; 3 January 1867 – 18 March 1934) was a French chemist noted for his work in thermochemistry. He was a member of the Académie des Sciences, President of the French Chemical Society and an honorary Fellow of the British Chemical Society.

Léon-Gervais-Marie Maquenne (2 December 1853 – 10 January 1925) was a French chemist and plant physiologist born in Paris.
From 1871 he worked in the laboratory of agricultural chemistry at the Ecole d'agriculture in Grignon. Here, he was a student of Pierre Paul Dehérain (1830-1902). In 1883 he became préparateur at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, where from 1885 to 1898 he served as an assistant to the chair of Physiologie végétale. In 1898 he succeeded Georges Ville (1824-1897) as chair of Physique végétale, a position he held on to until 1925. In 1904 he became a member of the Académie des sciences.
Among Maquenne's contributions was research involving the chemical make-up of sugar alcohols. He was able to resolve the chemical constitution of inositol and demonstrated it to be a hexahydroxycyclohexane.He is credited with invention of the so-called "Maquenne block", an apparatus used for determining the melting point of chemical compounds.

Louis Camille Maillard ( my-YAR; French: [lwi kamij majaʁ]; 4 February 1878 – 12 May 1936) was a French physician and chemist. He made important contributions to the study of kidney disorders. He also became known for the "Maillard reaction", the chemical reaction which he described in 1912, by which amino acids and sugars react in foods via contact with fats, giving a browned, flavorful surface to everything from bread and seared steaks to toasted marshmallows.

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.

Stéphane Leduc (1 November 1853 – 8 March 1939) was a French biologist who sought to contribute to understanding of the chemical and physical mechanisms of life. He was a scientist in the fledgling field of synthetic biology, particularly in relation to diffusion and osmosis. He was a professor at the École de Médecine de Nantes and worked on osmotic crystallisation and the physiological effects of electric current. He was an Officier de la Légion d'honneur.

Paul Marie Alfred Lebeau (19 December 1868 – 18 November 1959) was a French chemist. He studied at the elite École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI). Together with his doctoral advisor Henri Moissan he was working on fluorine chemistry discovering several new compounds, like bromine trifluoride, oxygen difluoride, selenium tetrafluoride and sulfur hexafluoride.
In 1899 he was able to obtain pure beryllium by electrolysis sodium fluoroberyllate (Na2[BeF2]).
In World War I he improved the gas mask design used by the French army.