Curated category
Naturalized citizens of France
- 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.
- Igor StravinskyIgor Stravinsky once received a score back from his mentor in the mail, returned with a note reading: "Not delivered on account of death of addressee." That…
- Joseph-Louis LagrangeJoseph-Louis Lagrange was born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia in Turin on the 25th of January 1736, the firstborn of eleven children.
- Le CorbusierLe Corbusier insisted that "a house is a machine to live in," a maxim that would unsettle architects for a century. The man who wrote it was born…
- Marc ChagallMarc Chagall spent nearly a century alive on earth, and almost every one of those years was spent either fleeing something or painting it.
- Marie CurieMarie Curie carried test tubes of radioactive isotopes loose in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, charmed by the faint light they gave off in…
- Jacques OffenbachJacques Offenbach died on the 5th of October 1880, just months before the premiere of the opera he had spent years trying to finish.
- Wassily KandinskyWassily Kandinsky stood in his studio one day and stared at a painting on the wall for a long moment before realising it was his own work, hanging upside…
- Christopher TolkienChristopher Tolkien spent 45 years editing his father's unpublished writings, and in doing so became something more than a keeper of manuscripts.
- Natalia GoncharovaNatalia Goncharova was born on the 3rd of July 1881, the same year as Picasso and Fernand Leger, in the small village of Nagaevo in what is now the Chernsky…
- Joakim NoahJoakim Simon Noah was born in New York on the 25th of February, 1985. He played professional basketball for more than a decade.