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.
Paul-Quentin Desains (12 July 1817 – 3 May 1885) was a French physicist.
He was born at Saint-Quentin, Aisne, France. He studied literature at the Collège des Bons-Enfants in his native town and then entered the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Here he distinguished himself, taking the first prize in physics. In 1835 he entered the science section of the Ecole Normale where his brother Edouard had preceded him. He made the acquaintance there of La Provostaye who was at the time a surveillant and who became his lifelong friend and his associate in his researches. After completing his course, he accepted a professorship in 1839 at Caen, and in 1841 returned to Paris where he received similar appointments, first at the Lycée St-Louis and later at the Lycée Condorcet, where he succeeded La Provostaye who was forced to retire on account of ill-health. His growing reputation won for him in 1853 the chair of physics at the Sorbonne which he held for thirty-two years.
Between 1858 and 1861 he made many observations in connexion with terrestrial magnetism. His most important contributions to physics, however, were his researches on radiant heat made in conjunction with La Provostaye. The two physicists concluded that radiant heat, like light, was a disturbance set up in what was then called the ether and propagated in all directions by transverse waves. They showed in a series of "Mémoires" published in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique that it manifests the characteristic phenomena of reflection, refraction, and polarization, as well as of emission and absorption. They also made a study of the latent heat of fusion of ice, and a careful investigation of the range of applicability of the Dulong-Petit law representing the law of cooling.
He also worked in connexion with the establishment and development of laboratory instruction in physics. When the Ecole pratique des hautes études was founded in 1869 he was commissioned to organize the physical laboratory. During the Siege of Paris (1870–1871), he succeeded after many difficulties in establishing electrical communication with d'Alméida who was outside the lines. The exposure he underwent brought on rheumatism which greatly weakened his constitution. He died in Paris. Desains published a Traité de Physique (Paris, 1855) and numerous articles, chiefly with La Provostaye.
Louis Marcel Brillouin (French pronunciation: [lwi maʁsɛl bʁijwɛ̃]; 19 December 1854 – 16 June 1948) was a French physicist and mathematician.
Born in Saint-Martin-lès-Melle, Deux-Sèvres, France, his father was a painter who moved to Paris when Marcel was a boy. There he attended the Lycée Condorcet. The Brillouin family returned to Saint-Martin-lès-Melle during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to escape the fighting. There he spent time teaching himself from his grandfather's philosophy books. After the war, he returned to Paris and entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1874 and graduated in 1878. He became a physics assistant to Éleuthère Mascart (his future father-in-law) at the Collège de France, while at the same time working for his doctorates in mathematics and physics, which he gained in 1880 and 1882, respectively. Brillouin then held successive posts as assistant professor of physics at universities in Nancy, Dijon and Toulouse before returning to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1888. Later, he was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Collège de France from 1900 to retirement in 1931.
In 1911 he was one of only six French physicists invited to the first Solvay Conference. He was awarded the Prix La Caze for 1912.
Brillouin was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1921. He was an officer of the Legion of Honour.During his career he was the author of over 200 experimental and theoretic papers on a wide range of topics which include the kinetic theory of gases, viscosity, thermodynamics, electricity, and the physics of melting conditions. Most notably he:
built a new model of the Eötvös balance,
wrote on Helmholtz flow and the stability of aircraft,
worked on a theory of the tides.Brillouin died in Paris (16 June 1948). His son Léon Brillouin, also had a prominent career in physics.
Guy La Chambre (5 June 1898 – 24 May 1975) was a French politician. He served as Minister of Merchant Marine in 1934 and Minister of Air from 1938 until 1940.
Dominique Frémy (5 May 1931 – 2 October 2008) was the creator of the Quid encyclopedia. His spouse Michèle and son Fabrice participated in writing it as well.
Frémy attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school. He was a diplomaed student of the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (English: Paris Institute of Political Studies) and of the Faculté des lettres de Paris. He was employed by Shell in London, but quit his job to produce a new encyclopedia with his wife, Dominique. It began in 1963, named Quid.
Gilbert Cesbron (13 January 1913, Paris – 12 August 1979, Paris) was a French novelist.
Michel Ciment (French: [simɑ̃]; 26 May 1938 – 13 November 2023) was a French film critic and the editor of the cinema magazine Positif.
Michel Ciment was born in Paris on 26 May 1938. He was a Chevalier of the Order of Merit, Knight of the Legion of Honour, Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters, and the president of FIPRESCI. Ciment died in Paris on 13 November 2023, at the age of 85.Ciment was noted for his love for American film, somewhat unusual in his French cultural environment. He credited his Americophilia to his memories of the liberation of Paris by American soldiers in 1944, when he was a child. Ciment's parents were Alexander and Helene Cziment; they changed their last name after the war. His father was a Hungarian-Jewish tailor and an immigrant to France, putting the family in particular danger during the Nazi occupation.He wrote books on great film directors, which were based on extensive interviews with their subjects. An anthology of interviews, Film World, was published in English 2009.
André Siegfried (April 21, 1875 – March 28, 1959) was a French academic, geographer and political writer best known to English speakers for his commentaries on American, Canadian, and British politics.
He was born in Le Havre, France, to Jules Siegfried, the French minister of commerce, and Julie Siegfried, the president of the National Council of French Women. An active member of the Democratic Republican Alliance like his father, André Siegfried was several times a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, but never won an election. On 23 January 1941, he was made a member of the National Council of Vichy France. A few months after the liberation of France in mid-1944, he was elected to the Académie française, taking the vacant seat of Gabriel Hanotaux (who had been elected in 1897). He died in Paris in March 1959.
Jean-Dominique Bauby (French: [ʒɑ̃ dɔminik bobi]; 23 April 1952 – 9 March 1997) was a French journalist, author and editor of the French fashion magazine Elle.
Jean Tardieu (born in Saint-Germain-de-Joux, Ain, 1 November 1903, died in Créteil, Val-de-Marne, 27 January 1995) was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author.