French centenarians

Henri Fabre (29 November 1882 – 30 June 1984) was a French aviator and the inventor of the first successful seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion.Henri Fabre was born into a prominent family of shipowners in the city of Marseille. He was educated in the Jesuit College of Marseilles where he undertook advanced studies in sciences.
He intensively studied aeroplane and propeller designs. He patented a system of flotation devices which he used when he succeeded in taking off from the surface of the Etang de Berre on 28 March 1910. On that day, he completed four consecutive flights, the longest about 600 metres. the Hydravion has survived and is displayed in the Musée de l'Air in Paris. Henri Fabre was soon contacted by Glenn Curtiss and Gabriel Voisin who used his invention to develop their own seaplanes.
As late as 1971, Fabre said he was still sailing his own boat single-handedly in Marseille harbour.He died at the age of 101 as one of the last living pioneers of human flight.

Georges-Emmanuel Clancier (3 May 1914 – 4 July 2018) was a French poet, novelist, and journalist. He won the Prix Goncourt (poetry), the Grand Prize of the Académie française, and the grand prize of the Société des gens de lettres.

Pierre Jean Louis Germain Soulages (French: [sulaʒ]; 24 December 1919 – 25 October 2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. In 2014, President François Hollande of France described him as "the world's greatest living artist." His works are held by leading museums of the world, and there is a museum dedicated to his art in his hometown of Rodez.
Soulages is known as "the painter of black", owing to his interest in the colour "both as a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens a mental field all its own." He saw light as a work material; striations of the black surface of his paintings enable him to reflect light, allowing the black to come out of darkness and into brightness, thus becoming a luminous colour.Soulages produced 104 stained-glass windows for the Romanesque architecture of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques from 1987 to 1994. He received international awards, and the Louvre in Paris held a retrospective of his works on the occasion of his centenary.

Paul Henri Büsser (16 January 1872 – 30 December 1973) was a French classical composer, organist, conductor and teacher. Among his teachers were César Franck, Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet. In addition to his own compositions Büsser edited and orchestrated a wide range of music – mostly but not exclusively French – dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries. He was at various times in his career the conductor of the Paris Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, and professor of composition at the Conservatoire de Paris.