José Aboulker (5 March 1920 – 17 November 2009) was a French Algerian Jew and the leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in French Algeria in World War II. He received the U.S. Medal of Freedom, the Croix de Guerre, and was made a Companion of the Liberation and a Commander of the Légion d'honneur. After the war, he became a neurosurgeon and a political figure in France, who advocated for the political rights of Algerian Muslims.
Simone Del Duca (18 July 1912 – 16 May 2004) was a French businesswoman, a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and major philanthropist. Married to French publishing magnate Cino Del Duca, on his death in 1967 she was left with a considerable fortune. Although she remained on the board of directors of her late husband's companies, Simone Del Duca devoted a great deal of her time to philanthropic causes. In 1969 she established a prestigious literary prize in her husband's name. The Prix mondial Cino Del Duca provides a substantial cash prize and was made open to qualified persons from anywhere in the world.
Simone Del Duca's charitable activities increased to where in 1975 she created the Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation. The Foundation's primary involvements gave support for scientific research and after being made a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1994 she funded two major prizes in visual arts and music awarded through the Académie. Simone Del Duca's philanthropic work was recognized by the government of France who made her a commander of the Legion of Honor.
Jean-Paul Costa (3 November 1941 – 27 April 2023) was a French jurist and was the President of the European Court of Human Rights from 19 January 2007 until his term at the Court ended on 3 November 2011. He was first appointed a judge of the Court on 1 November 1998, and in 2009 was elected to serve an additional three years as President.
Gérard Mestrallet (French pronunciation: [ʒeʁaʁ mɛstʁalɛ], born 1 April 1949 in Paris, France) is a French manager who served as chairman of the board of directors of Engie and as CEO from 2008 to 2016. He is also the chairman of Suez.
Didier Lombard (born 27 February 1942) is a French businessman. Between February 2005 and March 2010 he was chairman and CEO of France Télécom. In 2010 he resigned as CEO, retaining the chairmanship. Since 2012, he has been under indictment for criminal acts of "moral harassment" (harcèlement moral) for abusive human resource policies during his leadership at France Télécom alleged to have caused a number of suicides, leading to a criminal trial in May 2019.
Jean-Paul Béchat (September 2, 1942 – November 22, 2014) was a French engineer. He was the CEO of Snecma then Safran until 2007.
Édouard Brézin (French: [bʁezɛ̃]; born 1 December 1938 Paris) is a French theoretical physicist. He is professor at Université Paris 6, working at the laboratory for theoretical physics (LPT) of the École Normale Supérieure since 1986.
Pierre Bénichou, Commandeur, (1 March 1938 – 31 March 2020) was a French journalist.
Claude Parent (26 February 1923 – 27 February 2016), born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, was a French architect.
Architect, polemicist and theoretician, Claude Parent was the first person in France to make a sharp epistemological break with modernism, beginning in the mid 1950s. Through articles, books, magnificent manifesto-drawings and built projects, his work has enabled us to rethink our understanding and evolve our grasp of space. From the Maison Drusch (1963) all the way to his project for the Musée du Prado (1995), he has sought to create discontinuity by shifting and tipping volumes and by fracturing of the plan. Essentially self-taught, he began his career with Ionel Schein, with whom he worked until 1955. He also participated in the Espace group, founded in 1951 by the artists André Bloc and Félix del Marle. The Architecture Principe group (1963–68) was born out of his encounter with Paul Virilio. As was the adventure of the oblique function, their innovation through the continuity of the inclined plane, which led to the construction of the l’Eglise Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay in Nevers (1966).
After the 1968 split with Virilio, Claude Parent continued to experiment, develop and build the oblique function into his projects (Claude Parent's own house in Neuilly, painter Andrée Bellaguet's apartment) as well as in temporary installations in several Maisons de la Culture (Culture centers in France in the late 60s). In 1970, he curates and designs the French Pavilion at the 35th Venice Art Biennale, Italy, inviting artists such as Gérard Mannoni, Gilles Ehrmann, Samuel Buri; François Morellet, Andrée Bellaguet, Jean-Pierre Cousin and Charles Maussion. Claude Parent's space design (called "The Line of the Greatest Slope") is the first successful attempt to construct an oblique space. Imagined alone, but elaborated collectively, the French pavilion is considered by Parent as "a collective act [...] a creative action." With this event, Claude Parent transforms the viewer into works of art. This experiment becomes his working material and the reactions, positive as well as negative, will form the basis of the architect's study.Parent also designed several superstores in “béton brut” or “raw concrete” in Ris Orangis (1969) and Sens (1970), among others. In 1974, a few months after the oil crisis, EDF (France's production and distribution power company), Parent, 47, is entrusted with the coordination of a group of architects including, among others Paul Andreu, Jean Willerval and Roger Taillibert. For the next 10 years he leads the group to redesign nuclear power plants and find ways to better integrate them in the landscape. Commissions from the public sector for the French Education Department, the Regional Council of Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur in Marseille (1991), the Charles de Gaulle airport exchange center (1995) and the French Pavilion facade at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (1996) are all expressions of his quest for disequilibrium, movement and fluidity in architecture. Demanding, critical, provocative and fiercely obstinate, Claude Parent has continuously proposed places of contradiction generating doubt and disquiet and excluding any sort of passiveness with regard to architecture.
Though destined for a career as an engineer in the field of aeronautics, Claude Parent enrolled in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Toulouse in 1943 in the architecture studio, and then in 1946 in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris. He left before obtaining his diploma in architecture, and later founded his own firm in 1956, but was only recognized by and admitted to the Order of Architects in 1966, based on his experience. An Academician, Claude Parent is a Commander of the French Legion of Honor, a Commander of Arts and Letters, Officer of the Palmes Académiques and a Commander of the National Order of Merit. Prizes stand as milestones marking his entire career: National Grand Prize of Architecture (1979), the silver medal of the Academy of Architecture, the medal of the Central Union of the Decorative Arts, the gold medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Progress and the medal of the U.I.A for his work in criticism. In 1994, Architecture critic and curator Fréderic Migayrou celebrates Claude Parent's essential contribution and unique place in post WWII architecture, and many leading architects such as Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Zaha Hadid recognize him as both a precursor and an influence. In 2010, a retrospective exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine was dedicated to this major figure in the history of 20th-century architecture.
Jacques Marie Alfred Gaston Faure (2 March 1904 – 9 April 1988) was a French Army general and skier. He was the leader of the French national Olympic military patrol team in 1936 which placed sixth and in 1961 one of the masterminds of the Algiers putsch.