French centenarians

Paulette_Dubost

Paulette Dubost (8 October 1910 – 21 September 2011) was a French actress who began her career at the age of 7 at the Paris Opera.
She appeared in over 250 films and worked with directors such as Marcel Carné, Jean Renoir, Max Ophüls (Le Plaisir 1952 and Lola Montès, 1955) and François Truffaut. Her best-known role is as Lisette in Renoir's The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu, 1939). Originally intended to be a small role offering only a couple of days' work, the extent of her part grew during the four-month shooting schedule.She died three weeks before her 101st birthday.

Raymond_Abescat

Raymond Abescat (10 September 1891 in Paris – 25 August 2001 in Rueil-Malmaison) was one of the last surviving veterans of World War I in France, its oldest living man and its oldest living veteran when he died aged 109 years, 349 days.

Roger_Borniche

Roger Borniche (7 June 1919 – 16 June 2020) was a French author and detective of the Sûreté nationale.
Borniche was born in Vineuil-Saint-Firmin, Oise. He started as a singer, but his fledgling musical career was interrupted by the German invasion of 1940. To make a living, he took a job as a store detective. In 1943, he joined the Sûreté nationale as Inspector to avoid being shipped to a forced labour detail. Assigned to hunt the Resistance, he instead helped partisans escape from occupied France. He deserted in 1944, only days before the D-Day invasion.
Upon the liberation of France in August, he was reinstated to the Sûreté nationale and assigned to enforce France's abortion laws. The next year, he was transferred to a homicide unit.

Valérie_André

Valérie André (French pronunciation: [valeʁi ɑ̃dʁe] ; born 21 April 1922) is a veteran of the French Resistance, a neurosurgeon, an aviator and the first female member of the military to achieve the rank of General Officer, in 1976, as Physician General. In 1981, she was promoted to Inspector General of Medicine. A helicopter pilot, she is the first woman to have piloted a helicopter in a combat zone. She is also a founding member of the Académie de l'air et de l'espace.As a member of the military, she is not addressed as "Madame la Générale" (a term reserved for spouses of generals) but as "General".She started as a Medical Captain in Indochina in 1948, already a qualified parachutist and pilot, in addition to being an army surgeon. While in Indochina, she realized that the most difficult part of her duties was retrieving the wounded, who were often trapped in the jungle. She returned to France to learn how to pilot a helicopter, then flew one to Indochina. From 1952–1953, she piloted 129 helicopter missions into the jungle, rescuing 165 soldiers, and on two occasions completed parachute jumps to treat wounded soldiers who needed immediate surgery.One typical mission occurred on 11 December 1951, when casualties were in urgent need of evacuation from Tu Vu on the Black River. The only available helicopter, stationed near Saigon, was dismantled, flown to Hanoi by a Bristol Freighter and reassembled. Captain André then flew into Tu Vu despite heavy mist and anti-aircraft fire. There, she triaged the casualties, operated on the most pressing cases and then flew the urgent wounded back to Hanoi, two at a time. Later, she was put in command of a casualty evacuation flight.
She continued in Algeria as a Medical Commander in 1960, where she completed 365 war missions. She rose to the rank of Medical Lieutenant Colonel in 1965 then to Medical Colonel in 1970. She had a total of 3200 flight hours, and received 7 citations of the Croix de Guerre.
She has written two collections of memoirs : Ici, Ventilateur! Extraits d'un carnet de vol. (Calmann-Lévy, 1954) and Madame le général (Perrin, 1988).
She is one of eight women to hold the Grand-croix (Great Cross) rank in the Legion of Honour, with Germaine Tillion, Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, Jacqueline de Romilly, Simone Rozès, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, Yvette Farnoux and Gilberte Champion.
She is the aunt of politician André Santini.
She turned 100 on 21 April 2022.

Eugène_Bizeau

Eugène Bizeau (29 May 1883 in Véretz – 16 April 1989 in Tours) was a French anarchist poet and chansonnier. He contributed to many periodicals and libertarian newspapers of his time, including le Libertaire. He belonged to the "Muse Rouge" (Red Muse) group with Gaston Couté and Aristide Bruant.
Gérard Pierron in particular put to music and interpreted Bizeau's writing Ferraille à vendre and Il neige sur les mers. Alain Meilland set to music and interpreted Bizeau's Pacifiste text .
Bizeau came from a family of winegrowers and cultivated his vineyard until he was ninety years old. The party hall of Véretz is named after him. Bizeau died in 1989, at the age of 105.

Yvonne_Choquet-Bruhat

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (French: [ivɔn ʃɔkɛ bʁy.a] ; born 29 December 1923) is a French mathematician and physicist. She has made seminal contributions to the study of Einstein's general theory of relativity, by showing that the Einstein equations can be put into the form of an initial value problem which is well-posed. In 2015, her breakthrough paper was listed by the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity as one of thirteen 'milestone' results in the study of general relativity, across the hundred years in which it had been studied.She was the first woman to be elected to the French Academy of Sciences and is a Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur.