French explorers

Georges Houot (29 August 1913 – 7 August 1977) was a French naval officer and commander of a bathyscaphe unit.

Norbert Casteret (19 August 1897 – 20 July 1987) was a famous French caver, adventurer and writer, and is one of the most recognisable names in caving worldwide. Following Édouard-Alfred Martel (the "father of modern speleology", although Casteret sometimes also enjoys this title), Casteret, along with Robert de Joly, became a leading figure of French speleology between the world wars and into the middle of the 20th century.

Théodore André Monod (9 April 1902 – 22 November 2000) was a French naturalist, humanist, scholar and explorer.

Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (born Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazzà; 26 January 1852 – 14 September 1905) was an Italian-French explorer. With his family's financial help, he explored the Ogooué region of Central Africa, and later with the backing of the Société de Géographie de Paris, he reached far into the interior along the right bank of the Congo River. He has often been depicted as a man of friendly manner, great charm and peaceful approach towards the Africans he met and worked with on his journeys, but recent research has revealed that he in fact alternated this kind of approach with more calculated deceit and at times relentless armed violence towards local populations. Under French colonial rule, the capital of the Republic of the Congo was named Brazzaville after him and the name was retained by the post-colonial rulers, one of the few African nations to do so. (Other exceptions are Pretoria, South Africa, Port Louis, Mauritius, Libreville ,Gabon, and Victoria, Seychelles.)

Louis-Gustave Binger (French pronunciation: [lwi ɡystav bɛ̃ʒe]; 14 October 1856 – 10 November 1936) was a French officer and explorer who claimed the Côte d'Ivoire for France.
Binger was born at Strasbourg in the Bas-Rhin departement. In 1887 he traveled from Senegal up to the Niger River, arriving at Grand Bassam in 1889. During this expedition he discovered that the Mountains of Kong did not exist. He described this journey in his work Du Niger au golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi (From the Niger to the Gulf of Guinea though the land of the Kong and the Mossi) (1891).In 1892 he returned to the Guinea Coast to superintend the forming of the boundaries between the British and French colonies. In 1893 Binger was appointed governor of the Côte d'Ivoire, where he remained until 1898. He returned to France that year, to an administrative post in Paris at the French Colonial Ministry. In 1899 the Royal Geographical Society awarded him their Founder's Medal for his exploratory work.Louis Gustave Binger died at L'Isle-Adam, Île-de-France, France and was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. The city of Bingerville in the Ivory Coast is named after him.

Paul-Émile Victor (born Paul Eugène Victor; 28 June 1907 – 7 March 1995) was a French ethnologist and explorer.
Victor was born in Geneva, Switzerland to French Jewish parents of Bohemian and Polish descent. He graduated from École Centrale de Lyon in 1928. In 1931, he learned how to fly with his instructor and friend, Claude de Cambronne. In 1936, he led an expedition traversing Greenland by dog-sled. Victor, Robert Gessain, Michel Perez, and Eigil Knuth completed the 825 km from Christianshåb in the west to Angmagssalik in the east in 44 days. During World War II, he engaged himself in the US Air Forces.
After the War, he initiated the Expéditions polaires françaises to organize French polar expeditions. He died in 1995 on Bora Bora, to which he had retired in 1977.
A survey led by Victor in 1951 concluded that, under the ice sheet, Greenland is composed of three large islands. In 1952 he was awarded the Patron's Medal by the Royal Geographical Society of London for the work.Mount Victor, in the Belgica Mountains of Antarctica, is named for him.
His son, Jean-Christophe Victor, stars in the weekly geopolitical show Le dessous des cartes on Arte until December 2016. Another son, Teva Victor, is a sculptor.