French biochemists

Joseph Bienaimé Caventou (30 June 1795 – 5 May 1877) was a French pharmacist. He was a professor at the École de Pharmacie (School of Pharmacy) in Paris. He collaborated with Pierre-Joseph Pelletier in a Parisian laboratory located behind an apothecary. He was a pioneer in the use of mild solvents to isolate a number of active ingredients from plants, making a study of alkaloids from vegetables. Among their successes were the isolation of the following compounds:

Quinine sulfate later proved to be an important remedy for the disease malaria. Quinine is the active anti-malarial ingredient in the bark of cinchona tree.Neither of the partners chose to patent their discovery of this compound, releasing it for everybody to use. In 1823 they discovered nitrogen in alkaloid compounds. Other compounds they discovered include colchicine and veratrine.
The crater Caventou on the Moon is named after him.

Emile Justin Armand Gautier (23 September 1837, in Narbonne – 27 July 1920, in Cannes) was a French biochemist and dietitian.

Ernest Fourneau (4 October 1872 – 5 August 1949) was a French pharmacist who graduated in 1898 for the Paris university specialist in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology. He played a major role in the discovery of synthetic local anesthetics such as amylocaine, as well as in the synthesis of suramin. He authored more than two hundred scholarly works, and has been described as having "helped to establish the fundamental laws of chemotherapy that have saved so many human lives".Fourneau was a pupil of Friedel and Moureu, and studied in the German laboratories of Ludwig Gattermann in Heidelberg, Hermann Emil Fischer in Berlin and Richard Willstätter in Munich.
He headed the research laboratory of Poulenc Frères in Ivry-sur-Seine from 1903 to 1911.
One of the products was a synthetic local anesthetic that was named Stovaine (amylocaine).
This was a pun on the English translation of "fourneau" as "stove". (The same pun was used in the brand name of the drug acetarsol, Stovarsol.)
Other important medicines were antipyretics.
In 1910 Fourneau accepted the directorship of the Pasteur Institute's medical chemistry section, with the condition that he maintained his ties with Poulenc Frères. He recruited Germaine Benoit to work in the Institute as a new graduate.He was a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine.

Gabriel Bertrand (born 17 May 1867 in Paris, died 20 June 1962 in Paris) was a French pharmacologist, biochemist and bacteriologist.
Bertrand introduced into biochemistry both the term “oxidase” and the concept of trace elements.
The laccase, a polyphenol oxidase and an enzyme oxidating urishiol and laccol obtained from the lacquer tree, was first studied by Gabriel Bertrand in 1894.Bertrand's rule refers to the fact that the dose–response curve for many micronutrients is non-monotonic, having an initial stage of increasing benefits with increased intake, followed by increasing costs as excesses become toxic. In 2005, Raubenheimer et al. fed excess carbohydrates to Spodoptera littoralis and extended Bertrand's rule to macronutrients.In 1894, with Césaire Phisalix, he developed an antivenom for use against snake bites.Bertrand was made a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine in 1931. In 1932 he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Étienne-Émile Baulieu (born 12 December 1926) is a French biochemist and endocrinologist who is best known for his research in the field of steroid hormones and their role in reproduction and aging.