Notable Alumni of Pierre and Marie Curie University [Sorted List]

1. Gérard Férey

1941-2017 (aged 76)

researcher chemist

Gérard Férey was a French chemist who was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a professor at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. He specialized in the physical chemistry of solids and materials. He focused on the crystal chemistry of inorganic fluorides and on porous solids.

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2. Alain Mamou-Mani

1949-. (aged 77)

writer film producer

Alain Mamou-Mani is a French film producer and writer.

3. Marie-Laure Phinéra-Horth

1957-. (aged 69)

politician liberal profession

Marie-Laure Phinéra-Horth is a French politician, who was the first woman from French Guiana to be appointed to the French Senate in 2020. Prior to her role as a senator, she was mayor of Cayenne from 2010.

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4. Solange Ghernaouti

1958-. (aged 68)

IT security expert directeur de recherche university teacher

Solange Ghernaouti is a professor at the University of Lausanne and an international expert on cybersecurity and cyberdefence. She regularly collaborates with various United Nations, European and government institutions as well as with private corporations.

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5. Sophien Kamoun

1965-. (aged 61)

geneticist biologist

Sophien Kamoun is a Tunisian biologist. He is a senior scientist at The Sainsbury Laboratory and professor of biology at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Kamoun is known for contributions to our understanding of plant diseases and plant immunity. As of 2025, Kamoun became a co-editor of the Annual Review of Phytopathology.

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6. Eric Rignot

glaciologist earth scientist

Eric J. Rignot is the Donald Bren, Distinguished and Chancellor Professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and a Senior Research Scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He studies the interaction of the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica with global climate using a combination of satellite remote...

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7. Daniel Choquet

1962-. (aged 64)

neuroscientist researcher

Daniel Choquet is a French neuroscientist.

8. Maria J. Esteban

1956-. (aged 70)

mathematician

Maria J. Esteban is a Spanish mathematician. In her research she studies nonlinear partial differential equations, mainly by the use of variational methods, with applications to physics and quantum chemistry. She has also worked on fluid-structure interaction.

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9. Diane Mazloum

1980-. (aged 46)

novelist

Diane Mazloum is a French-Lebanese writer. Her novels are set against the history or present in Lebanon.

10. Yves André

1959-. (aged 67)

mathematician

Yves André is a French mathematician, specializing in arithmetic geometry.

11. André Paul

1933-. (aged 93)

editing staff publisher historian biblical scholar university teacher

André Paul is a noted French scholar, educator and writer in the fields of theology, biblical studies and ancient Judaism. Paul's early research explored the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Karaite Judaism.

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12. Claudine Hermann

1945-2021 (aged 76)

university teacher docent physicist

Claudine Hermann was a French physicist and Honorary Professor at École Polytechnique, the well-known grande école founded in 1794 and located in Palaiseau, France. In 1992 she became their first woman Professor. She was also the Vice President of the European Platform of Women Scientists. She founded an organisation, Femmes et sciences, who have proposed 72 names to be added...

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13. Isabelle Gallagher

1973-. (aged 53)

mathematician researcher research fellow professeur des universités

Isabelle Gallagher is a French mathematician. Her research concerns partial differential equations such as the Navier–Stokes equations, the wave equation, and the Schrödinger equation, as well as harmonic analysis of the Heisenberg group.

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14. Michel Sadelain

1960-. (aged 66)

researcher immunologist

Michel W. Sadelain is a genetic engineer and cell therapist at Columbia University New York, New York. He is the Director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy (CICET). Sadelain also serves as the Director of Columbia University Irving Medical Center's Cancer Cell Therapy Initiative in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. Sadelain was previously the Steve and...

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15. Laurent Nottale

1952-. (aged 74)

astrophysicist theoretical physicist

Laurent Nottale is an astrophysicist, a retired director of research at CNRS, and a researcher at the Paris Observatory. He is the author and inventor of the theory of scale relativity, which aims to unify quantum physics and relativity theory.

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16. Antonio Galves

1947-2023 (aged 76)

mathematician physicist neuroscientist university teacher

Jefferson Antonio Galves was a Brazilian mathematician, professor of the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of São Paulo (USP) and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. His field of studies was related to statistical models, in particular models that have stochasticity and variable range of memory. Galves was also the leader of NeuroMat, a research center...

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17. Mohamed Amine Sbihi

1954-. (aged 72)

mathematician politician

Mohamed Amine Sbihi is a Moroccan politician of the Party of Progress and Socialism. Between 3 January 2012 and 6 April 2017, he held the position of Minister of Culture in Abdelilah Benkirane's government. He was succeeded by Mohamed Laaraj. He was professor of Statistics and Mathematics at the Mohammed V University of Rabat and al-Akhawayn University of Ifrane.

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18. Marylène Patou-Mathis

1955-. (aged 71)

prehistorian zooarchaeologist paleontologist scientist zoologist

Marylène Patou-Mathis, is a French prehistorian academic and a specialist in the behavior of the Neanderthals and the San people. She studies the place of women in these societies and has questioned the projections of other prehistorians on women's roles in ancient times.

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19. Catherine Dulac

1963-. (aged 63)

university teacher molecular biologist neurobiologist

Catherine Dulac is a French–American molecular biologist and neuroscientist. She is a professor at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Harvard University and, since 2022, has been the current Samuel W. Morris University Professor. Prior to her appointment as University Professor, she was the Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of...

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20. Django Sissoko

1948-2022 (aged 74)

university teacher minister politician

Django Sissoko was a Malian civil servant who was Prime Minister of Mali from December 2012 to September 2013. He was Minister of Justice from 1984 to 1988 and subsequently served twice as Secretary-General of the Presidency, from 1988 to 1991 and from 2008 to 2011. He also served as Ombudsman from 2011 to 2012.

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21. Hervé Le Treut

1956-. (aged 70)

climatologist meteorologist

Hervé Le Treut, is a French climatologist specialized in climate numerical simulation. He is member of the French Academy of Sciences and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was director of the Pierre-Simon-Laplace Institute (2008-2019).

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22. Yves Agid

1940-. (aged 86)

physician researcher Professeur des universités – Praticien hospitalier neuroscientist

Yves Agid is a neurologist, neuropsychiatrist, cell biologist, neurochemist, academician, university professor, hospital doctor, researcher in biology and scientist specializing in neurosciences.

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23. Ahlem Belhadj

1964-2023 (aged 59)

university teacher activist child psychiatrist

Ahlem Belhadj was a Tunisian psychiatrist and women's rights campaigner. Serving at various times as president, chair, and director of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD), Belhadj campaigned for better treatment of women in Tunisia. She successfully fought for the right of women and children to apply for passports without permission of their husband or father. Belhadj led a...

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24. Enrique Zuazua

1961-. (aged 65)

mathematician university teacher

Enrique Zuazua is the Head of the Chair for Dynamics, Control, Machine Learning and Numerics - FAU DCN-AvH (Alexander von Humboldt Professorship) at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg (FAU). He is also Distinguished Research Professor and the Director of the Chair of Computational Mathematics of DeustoTech Research Center of the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain and Professor of...

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25. Nicolas Michelin

1955-. (aged 71)

urban planner architect

Nicolas Michelin is a French architect and urban planner. After joining forces with Finn Geipel to form LABFAC in 1988, he founded Agence Nicolas Michelin & Associés (ANMA) in 2000, which he currently runs in collaboration with his partners Michel Delplace and Cyril Trétout. He also has a firm dedicated to experimental projects called Studio Maé.

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26. Ahmad Motamedi

1953-. (aged 73)

politician

Ahmad Motamedi is an Iranian politician & member of Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic)'s Electrical Engineering faculty.

27. Thomas Ebbesen

1954-. (aged 72)

researcher physicist chemist university teacher

Thomas Wren Ebbesen is a Franco-Norwegian physical chemist and professor at the University of Strasbourg in France, known for his pioneering work in nanoscience. He received the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience “for transformative contributions to the field of nano-optics that have broken long-held beliefs about the limitations of the resolution limits of optical microscopy and imaging”, together with Stefan Hell,...

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28. Catherine Vidal

1951-. (aged 75)

researcher neurobiologist collection manager science communicator

Catherine Vidal is a French neurobiologist, feminist and essayist. She is the author of popular science books in the field of cognitive differences between genders.

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29. Maurice Taieb

1935-2021 (aged 86)

paleoanthropologist researcher geologist paleontologist

Maurice Taieb was a Tunisian French geologist and paleoanthropologist. He discovered the Hadar formation, recognized its potential importance to paleoanthropology and founded the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE). This enabled co-director Donald Johanson to discover an early hominin fossil, the 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecine Lucy in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.

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30. Jean Dalibard

1958-. (aged 68)

researcher professor physicist

Jean Dalibard is a French physicist, Professor at the École Polytechnique, member of the French Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the École Normale Supérieure. In 2009, Dalibard received the Blaise Pascal medal of the European Academy of Sciences for "his outstanding and influential works in atomic physics and quantum optics". In 2012, he received the Max Born Award...

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31. Philippe Taquet

1940-2025 (aged 85)

university teacher paleontologist research fellow

Philippe Taquet was a French paleontologist who specialised in dinosaur systematics of finds primarily in northern Africa.

32. Jean-François Le Gall

1959-. (aged 67)

researcher mathematician professeur des universités

Jean-François Le Gall is a French mathematician working in areas of probability theory such as Brownian motion, Lévy processes, superprocesses and their connections with partial differential equations, the Brownian snake, random trees, branching processes, stochastic coalescence and random planar maps. He received his Ph.D. in 1982 from Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris VI) under the supervision of Marc Yor....

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33. Jean-Pierre Demailly

1957-2022 (aged 65)

mathematician university teacher

Jean-Pierre Demailly was a French mathematician who worked in complex geometry. He was a professor at Université Grenoble Alpes and a permanent member of the French Academy of Sciences.

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34. Nicole El Karoui

1944-. (aged 82)

mathematician

Nicole El Karoui is a French mathematician and pioneer in the development of mathematical finance, born 29 May 1944 in Paris. She is considered one of the pioneers on the French school of mathematical finance and trained many engineers and scientists in this field. She is Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at Sorbonne University, and held professorship positions at the...

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35. Eudald Carbonell

1953-. (aged 73)

paleoanthropologist

Eudald Carbonell i Roura is a Catalan archaeologist, anthropologist and paleontologist.

36. Thibault Damour

1951-. (aged 75)

physicist

Thibault Damour is a French physicist.

37. Nalini Anantharaman

1976-. (aged 50)

university teacher researcher mathematician

Nalini Anantharaman is a French mathematician known for her work in mathematical physics and analysis. She is currently a professor at the University of Strasbourg. She has won major prizes for her work, including the Henri Poincaré Prize in 2012.

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38. Fatoumata Kébé

1985-. (aged 41)

astrophysicist astronomer

Fatoumata Kébé is a French astrophysicist and educator. She specialises in space debris. She was named as one of Vanity Fair's Most Influential French People in the world in 2018.

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39. Jean-Jacques Hublin

1953-. (aged 73)

university teacher anthropologist paleoanthropologist

Jean-Jacques Hublin is a French paleoanthropologist. He is a professor at the Max Planck Society, Leiden University and the University of Leipzig and the founder and director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is best known for his work on the Pleistocene hominins, and on the Neandertals and...

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40. Laure Saint-Raymond

1975-. (aged 51)

mathematician university teacher

Laure Saint-Raymond is a French mathematician, and a professor of mathematics at Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES). She was previously a professor at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. She is known for her work in partial differential equations, and in particular for her contributions to the mathematically rigorous study of the connections between interacting particle systems, the Boltzmann equation,...

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41. Basarab Nicolescu

1942-. (aged 84)

university teacher collection manager physicist theoretical physicist research fellow

Basarab Nicolescu is an honorary theoretical physicist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Énergies, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. He is also a professor at the Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and Docteur ès-Sciences Physiques (PhD), 1972, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. He was appointed Professor Extraordinary at Stellenbosch...

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42. Michel Talagrand

1952-. (aged 74)

mathematician university teacher

Michel Pierre Talagrand is a French mathematician working in probability theory, functional analysis and mathematical physics. Doctor of Science since 1977, he has been, since 1985, directeur de recherches at CNRS and a member of the Functional Analysis Team of the Institut de mathématiques de Jussieu in Paris. Talagrand was also a faculty member at The Ohio State University for...

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43. Ghaleb Bencheikh Lehocine

1960-. (aged 66)

television presenter physicist radio producer Islamicist radio personality

Ghaleb Bencheikh is a Doctor of Science and physics.

44. Cheick Modibo Diarra

1952-. (aged 74)

astrophysicist astronomer minister politician

Cheick Modibo Diarra is a Malian astrophysicist, businessman, and politician who was acting Prime Minister of Mali from April 2012 to December 2012.

45. Alain Pompidou

1942-2024 (aged 82)

physician biologist university teacher politician

Alain Pompidou was a French scientist and politician. A professor of histology, embryology, and cytogenetics, he was the fourth president of the European Patent Office (EPO) from 1 July 2004, to 30 June 2007. He was the adopted son of Georges Pompidou, former President of France.

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46. Kit Armstrong

1992-. (aged 34)

composer pianist

Kit Armstrong is an American classical pianist, composer, organist, and former child prodigy of British-Taiwanese parentage.

47. Wendelin Werner

1968-. (aged 58)

professeur des universités mathematician

Wendelin Werner is a French mathematician working on random processes such as self-avoiding random walks, Brownian motion, Schramm–Loewner evolution, and related theories in probability theory and mathematical physics. In 2006, at the 25th International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain he received the Fields Medal "for his contributions to the development of stochastic Loewner evolution, the geometry of two-dimensional Brownian...

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48. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim

1959-. (aged 67)

politician chemist

Dr. Bibi Ameenah Firdaus Gurib-Fakim GCSK (born 17 October 1959) is a Mauritian politician and biodiversity scientist who served as the sixth president of Mauritius from 2015 to 2018. In December 2014, she was selected to be the presidential candidate of the Alliance Lepep. After Kailash Purryag resigned on 29 May 2015, both Prime Minister Sir Anerood Jugnauth and Leader...

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49. Pierre Bellanger

1958-. (aged 68)

businessperson essayist

Pierre Christian Bellanger is a French businessman who is founder and CEO of radio station Skyrock, and founder of Skyrock.com (French-language social network).

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50. Maud Bregeon

1991-. (aged 35)

ingénieurs et cadres techniques d'entreprise engineer politician

Maud Bregeon is a French politician of Renaissance, who has served as the spokeswoman of the Government in the Barnier government between September and December 2024 and again for the government of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu since 2025. She first became a deputy for Hauts-de-Seine's 13th constituency in the National Assembly in 2022.

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51. Patrick Pelloux

1963-. (aged 63)

columnist emergency physician

Patrick Pelloux is a French physician and activist. He is a specialist of emergency medical services.

52. Bernard Debré

1944-2020 (aged 76)

physician urologist university teacher politician

Bernard Debré was a French urologist at Hôpital Cochin and a member (deputy) of the National Assembly of France. He was one of the representatives of the city of Paris, and was a member of the Union for a Popular Movement. He is a son of Anne-Marie Lemaresquier and politician Michel Debré, who was Prime Minister of France, and twin-brother...

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53. Claude Bartolone

1951-. (aged 75)

politician

Claude Bartolone is a French politician who served as President of the National Assembly of France from 2012 to 2017.

54. Anne L'Huillier

1958-. (aged 68)

physicist university teacher

Anne Geneviève L'Huillier is a French physicist. She is a professor of atomic physics at Lund University in Sweden.

55. Maïmouna Doucouré

1985-. (aged 41)

actor screenwriter film director

Maïmouna Doucouré, is a French screenwriter and film director. She gained international recognition in 2015 with her short -film Maman(s).

56. Alain Connes

1947-. (aged 79)

mathematician researcher professor university teacher

Alain Connes is a French mathematician, known for his contributions to the study of operator algebras and noncommutative geometry. He was a professor at the Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982.

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57. Nicolas Hulot

1955-. (aged 71)

film director journalist television producer photographer politician

Nicolas Jacques André Hulot is a French journalist and environmental activist. He is the founder and honorary president of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation, an environmental group established in 1990.

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58. Emmanuelle Charpentier

1968-. (aged 58)

immunologist scientist university teacher biochemist microbiologist

Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier is a French professor and researcher in microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry. She has served as a director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin since 2015. Three years later, she founded an independent research institute, the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. In 2020, Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna of the...

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59. Sindika Dokolo

1972-2020 (aged 48)

art collector businessperson

Sindika Dokolo was a Congolese businessman and art collector, married to Isabel dos Santos since 2002, the eldest daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos, then President of Angola. Dokolo owned one of the most important contemporary African art collections of more than 3,000 pieces. He died on 29 October 2020, in a free diving accident near Umm al-Hatab Island in...

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60. Serge Haroche

1944-. (aged 82)

researcher physicist scientist professeur des universités

Serge Haroche is a French physicist who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with David J. Wineland for "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems", a study of the particle of light, the photon. This and his other works developed laser spectroscopy. Since 2001, Haroche is a professor at the Collège de...

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61. Christine Petit

1948-. (aged 78)

researcher geneticist biologist professor

Christine Petit is a French geneticist. She holds professorships at the Collège de France and the Pasteur Institute.

62. Taraneh Javanbakht

1974-. (aged 52)

photographer literary critic playwright essayist translator

Taraneh Javanbakht is an Iranian-Canadian scientist and polymath.

63. Ngô Bảo Châu

1972-. (aged 54)

mathematician professor

Ngô Bảo Châu is a Vietnamese-French mathematician at the University of Chicago, best known for proving the fundamental lemma for automorphic forms (proposed by Robert Langlands and Diana Shelstad). He is the first Vietnamese national to have received the Fields Medal.

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64. Philippe Sansonetti

1949-. (aged 77)

researcher microbiologist professor

Philippe J. Sansonetti is a French microbiologist, professor at the Pasteur Institute and the Collège de France in Paris. He is the director of the Inserm Unit 786 (Microbial colonisation and invasion of mucosa) and of the Institut Pasteur laboratory Pathogénie Microbienne Moléculaire.

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65. Gilles Bloch

1961-. (aged 65)

physician

Gilles Bloch is a French polytechnicien, doctor of medicine and researcher in molecular biophysics, specializing in muscle and brain metabolism. He was director general of research and innovation from 2006 to 2009, then president of Paris-Saclay University between 2015 and 2018, and president of Inserm between 2019 and 2023. Since September 2023, he has served as President of the National...

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66. Gilles Pisier

1950-. (aged 76)

mathematician university teacher

Gilles I. Pisier is a professor of mathematics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University and a distinguished professor and A.G. and M.E. Owen Chair of Mathematics at the Texas A&M University. He is known for his contributions to several fields of mathematics, including functional analysis, probability theory, harmonic analysis, and operator theory. He has also made fundamental contributions to...

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67. Lionel Naccache

1969-. (aged 57)

researcher Professeur des universités – Praticien hospitalier neurologist

Lionel Naccache is a French neurologist and specialist in cognitive neuroscience.

68. Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz

1959-. (aged 67)

Director of Research at CNRS researcher neuroscientist pediatrician

Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz is a French paediatrician. She is the Professor and Director of the Developmental Neuroimaging Lab at CNRS. Her research uses non-invasive brain imaging to understand children's cognitive function. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

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69. Didier Fassin

1955-. (aged 71)

humanitarian university teacher anthropologist sociologist physician

Didier Fassin is a French anthropologist and sociologist. He is a professor at the Collège de France on the chair “Moral Questions and Social Issues in Contemporary Societies” and the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and holds a Direction of Studies in Political and Moral Anthropology at the École des...

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70. Jean-Michel Bismut

1948-. (aged 78)

mathematician

Jean-Michel Bismut is a French mathematician who has been a professor at the Université Paris-Sud since 1981. His mathematical career covers two apparently different branches of mathematics: probability theory and differential geometry. Ideas from probability play an important role in his works on geometry.

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71. Jean-Michel Coron

1956-. (aged 70)

mathematician university teacher

Jean-Michel Coron is a French mathematician. He first studied at École Polytechnique, where he worked on his PhD thesis advised by Haïm Brezis. Since 1992, he has studied the control theory of partial differential equations, and which includes both control and stabilization. His results concern partial differential equations related to fluid dynamics, with emphasis on nonlinear phenomena, and part of...

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72. Dominique Strauss-Kahn

1949-. (aged 77)

economist lawyer university teacher politician

Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn, also known as DSK, is a French economist and politician who served as the tenth managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and was a member of the French Socialist Party. He attained notoriety due to his involvement in several sex scandals. Strauss-Kahn was a professor of economics at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense...

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73. Marc Fontecave

1956-. (aged 70)

university teacher bioinorganic chemist researcher professor chemist

Marc Fontecave is a French chemist. An international specialist in bioinorganic chemistry, he currently teaches at the Collège de France in Paris, where he heads the Laboratory of Chemistry of Biological Processes.

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74. Marc Yor

1949-2014 (aged 65)

mathematician university teacher

Marc Yor was a French mathematician well known for his work on stochastic processes, especially properties of semimartingales, Brownian motion and other Lévy processes, the Bessel processes, and their applications to mathematical finance.

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75. Athina Coustenis

1961-. (aged 65)

astrophysicist

Athena Coustenis is an astrophysicist specializing in planetology. Coustenis, a French national, is director of research, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, at LESIA (Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique), at the Paris Observatory, Meudon. She is involved in several space mission projects for the European Space Agency (ESA) and for NASA. Her focus is on gas giant planets...

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76. Laurent Lantieri

1963-. (aged 63)

university teacher plastic surgeon

Laurent Lantieri is a French plastic surgeon who is a pioneer in the field of face transplantation. He performed the first second and third full face transplants. He was the first person to do a second face transplant on the same patient in 2018.

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77. Yoelle Maarek

1962-. (aged 64)

computer scientist researcher

Yoelle Maarek is a Tunisian-born Israeli computer scientist. She is the Chief Researcher of AI/IR for the Technology Innovation Institute. Maarek is a researcher in the field of AI and information retrieval. She is a former Vice President of Science and Research at Amazon, responsible for Amazon's Alexa Shopping Research and a former Vice President of Research, at Yahoo! Labs,...

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78. François Pachet

1964-. (aged 62)

artificial intelligence researcher composer university teacher directeur de recherche civil engineer

François Pachet is a French scientist, composer and director of the Spotify Creator Technology Research Lab. Before joining Spotify he led Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. He is one of the pioneers of computer music closely linked to artificial intelligence, especially in the field of machine improvisation and style modelling. He has been elected ECCAI Fellow in 2014.

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79. Paul-Gilbert Langevin

1933-1986 (aged 53)

music critic teacher writer musicologist physical chemist

Paul-Gilbert Langevin was a French musicologist, who was a specialist on Anton Bruckner, Franz Schubert and 19th-century classical music.

80. François Bouchet

1955-. (aged 71)

astrophysicist

François R. Bouchet is a French astronomer specializing in physical cosmology, including formation of large scale structures and cosmic background radiation. He serves as the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris liaison for the Planck Mission Project.

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81. Christiane Taubira

1952-. (aged 74)

economist writer politician

Christiane Marie Taubira is a French politician who served as Minister of Justice of France in the governments of Prime Ministers Jean-Marc Ayrault and Manuel Valls under President François Hollande from 2012 until 2016. She was a member of the National Assembly of France for French Guiana from 1993 to 2012 and member of the European Parliament from 1994 to...

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82. Jean-Jacques Laffont

1947-2004 (aged 57)

university teacher economist

Jean-Jacques Marcel Laffont was a French economist specializing in public economics and information economics. Educated at the University of Toulouse and the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique (ENSAE) in Paris, he was awarded PhD in economics by Harvard University in 1975.

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83. Denis Jachiet

1962-. (aged 64)

Catholic deacon Catholic bishop Catholic priest

Denis Jachiet is a French prelate of the Catholic Church who has been bishop of Belfort-Montbéliard since 2021. He served as an auxiliary bishop of Paris from 2016 to 2021.

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84. André Choulika

1965-. (aged 61)

businessperson virologist

André Choulika is a biotechnologist, the inventor of nuclease-based genome editing and a pioneer in the analysis and use of meganucleases to modify complex genomes.

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85. Corinne Le Quéré

1966-. (aged 60)

physicist climatologist meteorologist university teacher

Corinne Le Quéré CBE FRS is a Canadian scientist. She is Royal Society Research Professor of Climate Change Science at the University of East Anglia and former Director of Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. She was the founding chair of the French High Council on Climate (2018-2024) and is a member of the UK Climate Change Committee since 2016....

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86. Yann Le Cun

1960-. (aged 66)

artificial intelligence researcher computer scientist software engineer professor electrical engineer

Yann André Le Cun is a French–American computer scientist working in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, robotics and image compression. He is the Jacob T. Schwartz Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He served as Chief AI Scientist at Meta Platforms before leaving to work on his...

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87. Anne Genetet

1963-. (aged 63)

politician

Anne Genetet is a French medical doctor and politician of Renaissance (RE) who briefly served as the Minister of National Education in the Barnier government from September to December 2024. She represented the 11th constituency for French residents overseas in the National Assembly from 2017 to 2024.

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88. Daniel Goldberg

1949-2023 (aged 74)

film producer screenwriter film director

Daniel Goldberg is a French Socialist politician. He is a mathematics teacher and was elected deputy in 2007 to represent La Courneuve.

89. Philippe Baptiste

1972-. (aged 54)

computer scientist researcher engineer

Philippe Baptiste is a French engineer, academic and researcher who has been serving as Minister responsible for Higher Education and Research in the government of Prime Minister François Bayrou since 2024, reporting to Minister Elizabeth Borne.

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90. Maboula Soumahoro

1976-. (aged 50)

scholar of English essayist university teacher women's rights activist

Maboula Soumahoro is a French scholar and Afro-feminist whose parents came to France from the Ivory Coast in the late 1960s. An associate professor in the English department of the University of Tours, she specializes in studies on Afro-American diaspora and has published a paper on Rastafari. A contributor to the French committee on the history of slavery (Comité national...

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91. Gérard Mourou

1944-. (aged 82)

university teacher researcher physicist

Gérard Albert Mourou is a French scientist and pioneer in the field of electrical engineering and lasers. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, along with Donna Strickland, for the invention of chirped pulse amplification, a technique later used to create ultrashort-pulse, very high-intensity (petawatt) laser pulses.

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92. Bernard Bigot

1950-2022 (aged 72)

official chemist university teacher nuclear physicist

Bernard Bigot was a French academic and civil servant. He served as the Director-General of the ITER organization between 2015 and 2022. He was the president of the École normale supérieure de Lyon and director of the French Commission for Atomic Energy.

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93. Karim Zaghib

1963-. (aged 63)

researcher

Karim Zaghib OC FRSC FCAE is an Algerian-Canadian electrochemist and materials scientist known for his contributions to the field of energy storage and conversion. He is currently Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering at Concordia University. As former director of research at Hydro-Québec, he helped to make it the world’s first company to use lithium iron phosphate in cathodes, and...

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94. Mahamadou Issoufou

1952-. (aged 74)

politician

Mahamadou Issoufou is a Nigerien politician who served as the president of Niger from 7 April 2011 to 2 April 2021. Issoufou was the prime minister of Niger from 1993 to 1994, president of the National Assembly from 1995 to 1996, and a candidate in each presidential election from 1993 to 2016. He led the Nigerien Party for Democracy and...

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95. Ivica Puljak

1969-. (aged 57)

research fellow politician physicist

Ivica Puljak is a Croatian politician, particle physicist and professor at University of Split's FESB division. He served as mayor of Split from 2021 to 2025 and is the president of the Centre political party.

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96. Suzana Herculano-Houzel

1972-. (aged 54)

neuroscientist

Suzana Herculano-Houzel is a Brazilian neuroscientist. Her main field of work is comparative neuroanatomy; her findings include a method of counting neurons in human and other animals' brains and the relation between the cerebral cortex area and the thickness and number of cortical folds.

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97. Lalla Malika Issoufou

1975-. (aged 51)

politician

Lalla Malika Issoufou is a Nigerien medical doctor and patron of many charities. She served as First Lady of Niger, alongside Aïssata Issoufou Mahamadou, from 7 April 2011 to 2 April 2021 as the second wife of President Mahamadou Issoufou.

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98. Zeresenay Alemseged

1969-. (aged 57)

paleoanthropologist archaeologist anthropologist researcher prehistorian

Zeresenay "Zeray" Alemseged is a paleoanthropologist who is a faculty member at the University of Chicago. In 2013, he was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. In 2022, he was appointed to the Comité Scientifique International du Musée d'Anthropologie Préhistorique de...

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99. Essam Heggy

1975-. (aged 51)

astronomer

Essam Heggy is an American and French space scientist of Egyptian descent.

100. Julia Kempe

1973-. (aged 53)

computer scientist researcher physicist mathematician

Julia Kempe is a French, German, and Israeli researcher in quantum computing. She is currently the Director of the New York University Center for Data Science and Professor at the Courant Institute.

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