Henri Victor Vallois (11 April 1889 – 27 August 1981) was a French anthropologist and paleontologist. He was one of the editors in chief of the Revue d'Anthropologie from 1932 to 1970, and became director of the Musée de l'Homme in 1950.
Jean Gagnepain (November 16, 1923 – January 3, 2006) was a French linguist and anthropologist.
André Leroi-Gourhan (; French: [ləʁwa guʁɑ̃]; 25 August 1911 – 19 February 1986) was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics and a penchant for philosophical reflection.
Pierre-Roland Giot (September 23, 1919 – January 4, 2002) was a French anthropologist, archaeologist and geologist.
Philippe Jacquin (22 January 1942 – 28 September 2002) was a French anthropologist.
Claude Meillassoux (; French: [mɛjasu]; December 26, 1925 – January 3, 2005) was a French neo-Marxist economic anthropologist and Africanist. A student of Georges Balandier, he did fieldwork among the Guro (Gouro) of Côte d'Ivoire; his thesis was published in 1964. In the 1970s he criticised Marshall Sahlins's use of the notion of "domestic mode of production". Meillassoux was throughout his life a politically committed critic of social injustice.
Georges Balandier (21 December 1920 – 5 October 2016) was a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Balandier was born in Aillevillers-et-Lyaumont. He was a professor at the Sorbonne (Université René Descartes, Paris-V), and is a member of the Center for African Studies (Centre d'études africaines [Ceaf]), a research center of the École pratique des hautes études (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences). He held for many years the Editorship of Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie (previously held by his mentor Georges Gurvitch) and edited the series Sociologie d'Aujourd'hui at Presses Universitaires de France. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1976. He died on 5 October 2016 at the age of 95.
Françoise Héritier (15 November 1933 – 15 November 2017) was a French anthropologist, ethnologist, and feminist. She was the successor of Claude Lévi-Strauss at the Collège de France (Chair of Comparative Studies of African Societies from 1982 to 1998, now emeritus professor). Her work dealt mainly with the theory of alliances and on the prohibition of incest (both theories based on the notion of exchange of women). In addition to Lévi-Strauss, she was also influenced by Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. She was replaced by Philippe Descola, who is the current holder of the chair of anthropology at the Collège.