Curated category
Members of the Académie Française
- Voltaire"This is no time to make new enemies." Those words are attributed to Voltaire on his deathbed, when a priest urged him to renounce Satan.
- Eugène IonescoEugène Ionesco sat down at age 40 to learn English from a textbook, and what came out of that exercise was not a language skill but a theatrical revolution.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo died on the 22nd of May 1885, at 50 Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. He was 83 years old, and he died of pneumonia.
- MontesquieuMontesquieu, born Charles Louis de Secondat on the 18th of January 1689, grew up in a château 25 kilometres south of Bordeaux, in southwest France.
- Jean RacineJean Racine was born on the 22nd of December 1639 in La Ferté-Milon, a small town in the province of Picardy in northern France, and he would die sixty years…
- Louis PasteurOn the 6th of July 1885, Louis Pasteur faced a choice that could have ended in his prosecution. A 9-year-old boy named Joseph Meister had been badly mauled…
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died on the 30th of October 2009, at the age of 100, and for four days the world did not know. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy…
- Jean CocteauJean Cocteau called himself a poet, and only a poet, even after he had written novels, staged plays, drawn erotica, and directed films that critics still…
- Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de GuibertJacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert was born on the 12th of November 1743 in Montauban, and by the time he was thirteen years old, he was already…
- Henri PoincaréHenri Poincaré was born on the 29th of April 1854 in the Cité Ducale neighborhood of Nancy, and by the time he died on the 17th of July 1912, he had touched…
- Joseph FourierJoseph Fourier fell down a flight of stairs on the 4th of May 1830. He had been living with a heart condition since his days in Egypt and Grenoble, but that…
- Pierre-Simon LaplacePierre-Simon Laplace stood before Napoleon Bonaparte in the early years of the nineteenth century and handed him a copy of his book on the universe.
- Alexis de TocquevilleAlexis de Tocqueville sailed to the United States in 1831 on a narrow assignment. The July Monarchy had sent him to examine American prisons and…
- Georges DumézilGeorges Dumézil was born in Paris on the 4th of March 1898, the son of a highly educated general in the French Army. By the time he died in the same city on…
- Victor DuruyVictor Duruy was born in Paris on the 10th of September 1811, the son of a factory worker, and his family expected him to follow his father into the trade.
- Hippolyte TaineHippolyte Taine was born on the 21st of April 1828 in Vouziers, a small town in the Ardennes, and he would grow up to reshape how an entire civilization…
- Louis de BroglieLouis de Broglie was born on the 15th of August 1892 in Dieppe, France, into a noble family that had sent soldiers and statesmen to French courts for…