Walloon movement activists

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître ( lə-MET-rə; French: [ʒɔʁʒ ləmɛːtʁ] ; 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first to theorize that the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by an expanding universe, which was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble. He first derived "Hubble's law", now called the Hubble–Lemaître law by the IAU, and published the first estimation of the Hubble constant in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe, calling it the "hypothesis of the primeval atom", and later calling it "the beginning of the world".

Jean-Claude Van Cauwenberghe (born 28 April 1944 in Charleroi), nicknamed "Van Cau", is a Belgian politician. He is member of the Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party; PS). He was the tenth Minister-President of Wallonia from 4 April 2000 until 30 September 2005. He resigned amid the ICDI affair and was replaced by Elio Di Rupo. He also served as mayor of Charleroi (1983-2000).

Jules Destrée (French: [dɛstʁe]; Marcinelle, 21 August 1863 – Brussels, 3 January 1936) was a Walloon lawyer, cultural critic and socialist politician. The trials subsequent to the strikes of 1886 determined his commitment within the Belgian Labour Party. He wrote a Letter to the King in 1912, which is seen as the founding declaration of the Walloon movement. He is famous for his quote "Il n'y a pas de Belges" (There are no Belgians), pointing to the lack of patriotic feelings in Flemings and Walloons, while pleading for some kind of federal state.

Jean-Maurice Dehousse (11 October 1936 – 9 February 2023) was a Belgian politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament between 1999 and 2004 as a member of the Parti Socialiste. Dehousse was the first and third Minister-President of Wallonia.

Pierre Paulus (1881–1959), later Baron Pierre Paulus de Châtelet, was a Belgian expressionist painter. He is best known as the designer of the "bold rooster" (French: coq hardi) adopted on 3 July 1913 as the symbol of the Walloon Movement and today the flag of Wallonia.Paulus gained notability during the Walloon Art Exposition of Charleroi in 1911 and, in the interwar period, he held several exhibitions in Europe and in the United States.

Marcel Thiry (13 March 1897 – 5 September 1977) was a French-speaking Belgian poet. During World War I, he and his brother Oscar served in the Belgian Expeditionary Corps in Russia.
He was awarded the Prix Valery Larbaud in 1976 for Toi qui pâlis au nom de Vancouver, a book of poems reminiscent of Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire. He is the father of virologist Lise Thiry.

Albert Mockel (27 December 1866 – 30 January 1945) was a Belgian Symbolist poet. Born in Ougrée, he was the editor of La Wallonie, an influential journal of Belgian, and even European, Symbolism. He died in January 1945 in Ixelles.