Henri Victor Vallois (11 April 1889 – 27 August 1981) was a French anthropologist and paleontologist. He was one of the editors in chief of the Revue d'Anthropologie from 1932 to 1970, and became director of the Musée de l'Homme in 1950.
Charles Henry (1859–1926) was a French librarian and editor. He was born at Bollwiller, Haut-Rhin, and was educated in Paris, where in 1881 he became assistant and afterward librarian in the Sorbonne. As a specialist in the history of mathematics, he was sent to Italy to seek some manuscripts of that nature which the government wished to publish. He edited several works upon kindred subjects, as well as memoirs, letters, and other volumes, and wrote critiques upon the musical theories of Rameau and Wronski. He is also credited with the invention of several ingenious devices and instruments used in psychophysiological laboratories. He published C. Huet's correspondence under the title Un érudit, homme du monde, homme d'église, homme de cour (1880), and he issued also Problèmes de géométrie pratique (1884) and Lettres inédites de Mlle. de Lespinasse à Condorcet et à D'Alembert (1887).Charles Henry, a mathematician, inventor, esthetician, and intimate friend of the Symbolist and anarchist writers Félix Fénéon and Gustave Kahn, met Georges Seurat, Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro during the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886. Henry would take the final step in bringing emotional associational theory into the world of artistic sensation: something that would influence greatly the Neo-Impressionists. Henry and Seurat were in agreement that the basic elements of art—the line, particle of color, like words—could be treated autonomously, each possessing an abstract value independent of one another, if so chose the artist. In 1889 Fénéon noted that Seurat knew that the line, independent of its topographical role, possesses an assessable abstract value, in addition, to the individual pieces of color, and the relation of both to the observer's emotion.
The Neo-Impressionists established what was accepted as an objective scientific basis for their painting in the domain of color. The underlying theory behind Neo-Impressionism would have a lasting effect on the works produced in the coming years by the likes of Robert Delaunay. The Cubists were to do so in both form and dynamics, and the Orphists would do so with color too. The decomposition of spectral light expressed in Neo-Impressionist color theory of Paul Signac and Charles Henry played an important role in the formulation of Orphism. Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, and Gino Severini all knew Henry personally.
Octave Hamelin (22 July 1856 in Montpellier – 11 September 1907 in Prades, Pyrénées-Orientales) was a French philosopher. He taught as a professor at the University of Bordeaux (1884-) and the University of Sorbonne (1905-). Hamelin was a close friend of the sociologist Émile Durkheim, with whom he shared an interest in the French philosopher Charles Renouvier. He is also known as a translator of classical Greek philosophers.Hamelin drowned in 1907, attempting to save two young women.
Étienne Marie Justin Victor Delbos (26 September 1862, Figeac – 16 June 1916, Paris) was a Catholic philosopher and historian of philosophy.
Delbos was appointed a lecturer at the Sorbonne in 1902. In 1911 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. He died in July 1916 as a result of an infectious myocarditis brought on by pleurisy. Maurice Blondel, a close friend, wrote an obituary account of Delbos and saw various posthumous publications through the press.He wrote on Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche and Kant. A series of lectures on post-Kantian philosophy, which Delbos viewed as shaped by contingent psychological and social factors rather than through the unfolding of some internal logic, were published posthumously and later (1942) collected in a single volume.Delbos was the father of the violinist and composer Claire Delbos. In turn, he was the father-in-law of Olivier Messiaen.
Georges Cogniot (15 December 1901 in Montigny-lès-Cherlieu, Haute-Saône – 12 March 1978) was a French writer, philosopher and politician of the French Communist Party.
Louis Favoreu (September 5, 1936 – September 1, 2004) was a French academic, specialized in public law, and a jurist. He was born in Lucq-de-Béarn (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) and died in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). He was also a law professor, a senior faculty member and President of Paul Cézanne University.
Robert-Henri Bautier (19 April 1922, Paris – 19 October 2010, Paris) was a French historian, archivist, and medievalist. He was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium in 1986.
Philippe Jacquin (22 January 1942 – 28 September 2002) was a French anthropologist.
Raymond Boudon (27 January 1934 – 10 April 2013) was a sociologist, philosopher and Professor in the Paris-Sorbonne University.
Jean Cazeneuve (17 May 1915 – 4 October 2005) was a French sociologist and anthropologist. Apart from being a scholar, he has been involved with Radio and TV at the executive level; from 1964 till 1974 he has been president of the French public Radio and TV agency (ORTF), after which he has been chairman of TF1, the first French national-wide channel, till 1978. He joined the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1973, of which became president in 1983.
He is highly regarded for his illuminating contribution to the study the ritual clowns.