French physicists

Louis Eugène Félix Néel (22 November 1904 – 17 November 2000) was a French physicist born in Lyon who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1970 for his studies of the magnetic properties of solids.

Gustave-Adolphe Hirn (21 August 1815 – 14 January 1890) was a French physicist, astronomer, mathematician, and engineer who made important measurements of the mechanical equivalent of heat and contributions to the early development of thermodynamics. He further applied his science in the practical development of steam engines.

Théodose Achille Louis Vicomte du Moncel or Théodore du Moncel (6 March 1821 – 16 February 1884) was a prominent French physicist and advocate of the use of electricity. He invented many electrical devices and wrote several books. He was also a proficient artist, making high-quality prints of scientific and cultural interest.He also worked as a popularizer of knowledge on electricity.
In 1879, he founded the journal La lumière électrique.
He is one of the founders of the Société Nationale des Sciences Naturelles et Mathématiques of Cherbourg and was a member of the French Academy of Sciences.He was conseiller général of the Manche département (1861–1870) (Canton of Cherbourg-Octeville-Sud-Ouest).

Paul-Auguste-Ernest Laugier (22 December 1812, in Paris – 5 April 1872) was a French astronomer, one of two French astronomers referred to as M. Laugier.

Louis Georges Gouy (February 19, 1854 – January 27, 1926) was a French physicist. He is the namesake of the Gouy balance, the Gouy–Chapman electric double layer model (which is a relatively successful albeit limited model that describes the electrical double-layer which finds applications in vast areas of studies from physical chemistry to biophysics) and the Gouy phase.
Gouy was born at Vals-les-Bains, Ardèche in 1854. He became a correspondent of the Académie des sciences in 1901, and a member in 1913.

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.

Louis François Clément Breguet (22 December 1804 – 27 October 1883), was a French physicist and watchmaker, noted for his work in the early days of telegraphy.
Educated in Switzerland, Breguet was the grandson of Abraham-Louis Breguet, founder of the watch manufacturing company Breguet. He became manager of Breguet et Fils watchmakers in 1833 after his father Louis Antoine Breguet retired.
Between 1835 and 1840 he standardized the company product line of watches, then making 350 watches per year, and diversified into scientific instruments, electrical devices, recording instruments, an electric thermometer, telegraph instruments and electrically synchronized clocks. With Alphonse Foy, in 1842 he developed the Foy-Breguet telegraph, an electrical needle telegraph to replace the optical telegraph system then in use. and a later step-by-step telegraph system (1847) was applied to French railways and exported to Japan. He observed in 1847 that small wires could be used to protect telegraph installations from lightning, the ancestor of the fuse.
In 1850 he manufactured a rotating mirror used by Hippolyte Fizeau to measure the relative speed of light in air and water.: 129  In 1856 he designed a public network of synchronized electric clocks for the center of Lyon. In 1866 he patented an electric clock controlled by a 100 Hz tuning fork.In 1870 he transferred the leadership of the company to Edward Brown. Breguet then focused entirely on the telegraph and the nascent field of telecommunications. He collaborated in the development of an induction coil, later improved by Heinrich Ruhmkorff.
In terms of honors, in 1843 he was appointed to the Bureau of Longitudes. In 1845 Breguet was awarded the Legion d'Honneur. He was made a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1874, and was elevated to Officer of the Legion d'Honneur in 1877. He is one of the 72 French scientists whose names are written around the base of the Eiffel Tower.Breguet was married and had one son Antoine (1851–1882) who also joined the family electrical business. With his son, he met Alexander Graham Bell and obtained a license to manufacture Bell telephones for the French market. He was the grandfather of Louis Charles Breguet and the uncle of Sophie Berthelot.

Marguerite Catherine Perey (19 October 1909 – 13 May 1975) was a French physicist and a student of Marie Curie. In 1939, Perey discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium. In 1962, she was the first woman to be elected to the French Académie des Sciences, an honor denied to her mentor Curie. Perey died of cancer in 1975.

Jacques Lewiner (born in 1943) is a French physicist and inventor. He is Professor and Honorary Scientific Director of École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI Paris), and (since 2012) dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at PSL Research University.
Jacques Lewiner has carried out basic and applied research in various domains of Physics. Following his PhD, he taught at Catholic University of America and specialized in the study of the electrical properties of solid matter. Back in France he was nominated Professor in charge of the Electromagnetism Chair at ESPCI Paris where Georges Charpak arrived in 1980. From 1987 to 2001 he was directeur d'études at ESPCI Paris under the direction of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes.
Lewiner's works have been devoted to electrical insulators and particularly electrets, instrumentation and sensors, for instance in medical imaging, or on the improvement of telecommunication networks.
Jacques Lewiner has filed a large number of patent applications leading to industrial development, either through licenses granted to industrial companies or through start-up companies often created with former students or researchers. He has participated in the creation of various technology oriented start up companies, for instance Inventel, specializing in Telecommunications, Finsécur which develops and markets fire detection systems, Sculpteo which is an online 3D printing platform, Roowin in the field of chemical synthesis and Cynove in embedded electronics devices. Most of these companies have experienced a strong growth. For instance Inventel, which was the French leader for multimedia gateways was bought by Thomson SA in 2005. With Jean-Louis Viovy he created Fluigent which develops fluid motion systems for micro-fluidic applications.
Jacques Lewiner is laureate of the French Academy of Sciences in 1990, Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honor, member of the French Academy of Technologies since 2005, Honorary Fellow of the Technion, Doctor Honoris Causa from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Doctor Honoris Causa from Technion. In 2017 he has received the Marius Lavet Special Prize.In 1968 he married Colette de Botton (who received her doctorate in physics in 1973 and has won several awards). They have three children. In 2005 Jacques and Colette Lewiner gave a large endowment to the Technion's Institute for Theoretical Physics, and in June 2006 a naming ceremony established the Lewiner Institute for Theoretical Physics.