Articles with French-language sources (fr)

Jean-Paul Proust (3 March 1940 – 8 April 2010) was a French and Monegasque civil servant. He served as the Minister of State of Monaco.

Lucien Aimé-Blanc (23 March 1935 – 19 February 2020) was a French police officer. Born in Marseille, he became vice chief of staff of the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) and also of the Narcotics brigade. He led the Office central de répression du banditisme (OCRB).
Lucien Aimé-Blanc revealed in L'Indic et le Commissaire (2006) that left-wing activist Pierre Goldman had been assassinated on 20 September 1979 by a commando of the GAL, a Spanish assassination squad, led by Jean-Pierre Maïone. According to Aimé-Blanc, Henri Curiel, a anti-colonialist opposed to French Algeria may also have been the victim of the same Jean-Pierre Maïone, who was his informant for years.

André Auguste Édouard Hirschauer (16 June 1857 in Saint-Avold, Moselle, France – 27 December 1943 in Versailles, Yvelines, France) was a French lieutenant general in the First World War and from 1920 to 1936 representative of Lorraine in the Senate.At the start of 1914, General Hirschauer was in command of a brigade of balloons comprising the 5th and 8th Combat Engineer Regiments of Versailles. On 8 February he was appointed Chief of Staff of Paris dealing with engineering of the area southwest of Paris and worked under the command of General Gallieni.
But at the outbreak of the war, Hirschauer requested to be sent to the front. He became commander of the 29th Infantry Brigade, and then the 63rd Infantry Division. Promoted to Major-General, he was put in charge of the 18th Army Corps and later the 9th Army Corps. He took part in the battle of the Ourcq, the 2nd battle of Champagne & the battle of Verdun. He took Craonne in 1917. He did a triumphal entry into Mulhouse the 17 November 1918. He ended the war as commander of the Second Army.
After the armistice, he was named governor of Strasbourg and retired from service in 1919. He won the senate election in Moselle the 11 January 1920. He was reelected in 1924 and 1932.

Yves Parlier (born 14 November 1960) is a French sailor. He is very well known in the offshore sailing world and generally in France, where he was elected France's top sports personality in 2002.
Nicknamed "The extra-terrestrial" for his amazing exploits and capabilities, Parlier currently holds two offshore 24-hour distance sailing records, set in April and May 2006.

Francis Joyon (born 28 May 1956) is a French professional sailboat racer and yachtsman. Joyon and his crew currently hold the Jules Verne Trophy for circumnavigation, on IDEC SPORT (40 days 23 hours 30 minutes 30 seconds), nearly five days less than the previous reference time. He held the record for the fastest single-handed sailing circumnavigation from 2008 to 2016.
Although previously well known as an offshore sailor, Joyon's real leap to international prominence came in February 2004 when the Breton became the fastest world solo yachtsman, setting a time of 72 days 22 hours and 54 minutes and 22 seconds, over 20 days faster than the previous record for a circumnavigation.
During the record run he sailed more than 28,000 nautical miles (51,900 km) at an average speed of 15.5 knots (28.7 km/h) on the 27 metres (89 ft) IDEC. IDEC, formerly known as Sport Elec, had previously taken 71 days to win the Jules Verne Trophy. Joyon took only an extra day on his own with a boat not designed for single-handed sailing, original (over 10 year old) sails and no weather router.
On 6 July 2005 Francis Joyon and IDEC crossed the finishing line between Lizard Point and Ushant 6 days 4 hours 1 minute and 37 seconds after the start at Ambrose Light off New York, breaking the 11-year-old record of Laurent Bourgnon for the single-handed crossing of the Atlantic Ocean with a sailing boat. During the same voyage he also broke the 24-hour distance record for single-handed sailing by sailing 543 nautical miles (1,006 km) in one day on the 3 July 2005. Joyon's record voyage ended badly on 7 July while he was sailing back to his home port after completion of the transatlantic run. Joyon, who refused help to sail the boat home from the finish line and was still single-handed, was sailing across the English Channel. At a critical moment an exhausted Joyon fell asleep and the boat continued on autopilot. IDEC ran aground at the Pointe de Penmarc'h on the Breton coast. The €4 million trimaran was wrecked; Joyon escaped without injury.
On 9 May 2006 Joyon announced that he was building a new muilti-hull to be called IDEC 2. His new boat is designed for solo sailing unlike the original IDEC, which was originally designed for crewed sailing. Design was by Nigel Irens & Bernard Cabaret. IDEC 2 weighs 11 tons, compared to his previous boat which weighed 16 tons, and has 10% more sail area. The new boat was seen as capable of taking 3 days off the existing record under the same weather conditions.
On 23 November 2007 Joyon set off in IDEC 2 in an attempt to beat Ellen MacArthur's world record for a single handed circumnavigation. He achieved this on 20 January 2008 in 57 days, 13 hours 34 minutes and 6 seconds, in a voyage that is regarded as one of the most impressive sailing feats in recent history and in a time nearly two weeks less than the previous record.

Thomas Coville (born 10 May 1968) is a French yacht racer.
Coville was born in Rennes. He participated in significant offshore races and record attempts. In April 2012, he achieved 7 circumnavigations of the world, on mono or multihulls, single-handed or as sought-after helmsman. He held the around the world sailing record single-handed on the trimaran Sodebo Ultim in 49 days 3 hours 7 minutes and 38 seconds, until his record was broken by François Gabart in 2017 on trimaran Macif.

Yannick Bestaven (born 28 December 1972 in Saint-Nazaire in the Loire-Atlantique region) is a French offshore sailor. He won the Transat 6.50 in 2001, was twice winner of the Transat Jacques-Vabre, and won the Vendee Globe in 2020-21.

François de Grossouvre (29 March 1918 – 7 April 1994) was a French politician who was appointed in 1981 by the newly elected President François Mitterrand with the tasks of overseeing national security and other sensitive matters, particularly those concerning Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Morocco, Gabon, the Persian Gulf countries, Pakistan and both Koreas. He was also in charge of the French branch of Operation Gladio, the stay-behind paramilitary secret armies created by NATO during the Cold War.He was found dead with gunshot wounds at the Élysée Palace, the French President's official residence. The official verdict was suicide.

François Gros (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa ɡʁo]; 24 April 1925 – 18 February 2022) was a French biologist and one of the pioneers of cellular biochemistry in France. His scientific career concerned genes and their role in regulating cellular functions.Honorary professor at the Collège de France, member of the Institute of France, he was also director of the Pasteur Institute (1976–1982) and advisor to Prime Ministers Pierre Mauroy and Laurent Fabius (1981–1985).Elected correspondent (1977) then member (1979) of the French Academy of Sciences, he was permanent secretary from 1991 to 2000.Gros died on 18 February 2022, at the age of 96.

Anne Golon (17 December 1921 – 14 July 2017) was a French author, better known to English-speaking readers as Sergeanne Golon. Her Angélique novels have reportedly sold 150 million copies worldwide and have inspired multiple adaptations.