Curated playlist
French emigrants to the United States
- Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski was born on the 18th of August 1933 in interbellum Paris, the child of two agnostics from very different worlds. His mother was raised Catholic despite having a Jewish father. His father was a Jewish painter and sculptor…
- Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp walked into a New York exhibition hall in 1917 and submitted a urinal for display. He had signed it with a pseudonym, "R. Mutt", and titled it Fountain. The show committee declared it was not art and turned it away. Duchamp…
- Tony ParkerTony Parker walked into the San Antonio Spurs' summer camp before the 2001 NBA draft as an unknown teenager from France. Coach Gregg Popovich watched him struggle against a scout named Lance Blanks, and after just 10 minutes, Popovich was…
- Michel GondryMichel Gondry grew up in Versailles as the grandson of an inventor. That family connection to making things with your hands turns out to be the thread running through his entire creative life. He would go on to win an Academy Award for…
- Esther DufloEsther Duflo was born on the 25th of October 1972 in Paris, and by the age of 46 she had become the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. She shared that prize in 2019 with her husband Abhijit Banerjee…
- Marc Isambard BrunelMarc Isambard Brunel arrived into the world on the 25th of April 1769. He was born on a family farm in Hacqueville, Normandy. His father Jean Charles Brunel was a prosperous farmer who expected his second son to enter the priesthood. The…
- Vladimir NabokovVladimir Nabokov arrived in the United States in May 1940 aboard the SS Champlain, a Russian exile who spoke three languages and had already written nine novels that almost nobody in America had read. He was forty years old, nearly broke,…
- Joseph BonaparteJoseph Bonaparte arrived in the United States in the summer of 1815, hiding aboard a merchant vessel called the Commerce under the false name M. Bouchard. British naval officers searched the ship three times during the crossing. They never…
- Yann LeCunYann LeCun was born on the 8th of July 1960 in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, a suburb of Paris, and his surname carries the fingerprints of a culture older than France itself. Le Cun derives from the old Breton form Le Cunff, rooted in the…
- George SteinerFrancis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His right arm withered from birth yet his mother insisted he use it as an able-bodied person would. She believed self-pity was nauseating and…