Skip to content
Curated playlist

University of Paris alumni

  • Thomas AquinasThomas Aquinas's family held him prisoner for nearly a year. At nineteen he chose to join the Dominican preachers.
  • T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
  • André de GouveiaMontaigne called André de Gouveia the greatest principal in France. The Portuguese scholar ran a college in Bordeaux.
  • Denis DiderotJailed writer Denis Diderot annotated Paradise Lost with a toothpick and ink made from slate and wine.
  • Victor HugoVictor Hugo asked for a pauper's funeral and got the largest in French history.
  • John CalvinJohn Calvin called his own central teaching a decree dreadful indeed. He preached it anyway.
  • Ignatius of LoyolaA cannonball broke Ignatius of Loyola's leg and ended his soldiering. The Spanish knight later founded the Jesuits.
  • Diogo de GouveiaDiogo de Gouveia's lost tombstone said he served five kings of Portugal and four of France.
  • Marie CurieMarie Curie's cookbooks are still highly radioactive. They are sealed in lead-lined boxes.
  • Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard dropped his script and wrote dialogue day by day for the film Breathless.
  • Francis XavierFrancis Xavier died within sight of China, a country he never reached. He had once been a high-jumper in Paris.
  • Marquis de LafayetteThe Marquis de Lafayette lies buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris, beneath soil carried across the Atlantic from Bunker Hill in Massachusetts. He gathered that earth himself, intending it for his grave. Americans call him simply Lafayette.…
  • Joseph CampbellGeorge Lucas said Joseph Campbell's book helped shape Star Wars. They met only in 1984.
  • Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
  • Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir's partnership with Sartre began on a bench outside the Louvre.
  • Jacques-Louis DavidNapoleon never sat for David's painting of his own coronation. Pope Pius VII did, and blessed the painter.
  • ErasmusErasmus, born to a priest and orphaned by plague, became the most read author of his age.
  • Antoine LavoisierAntoine Lavoisier, who named oxygen, was guillotined in Paris in 1794. He was also a tax collector.
  • Jan AssmannEgyptologist Jan Assmann later admitted he no longer held his famous theory of monotheism in its original form.
  • Antoine-Jean GrosPainter Antoine-Jean Gros drowned himself in a river outside Paris after reading reviews of his final exhibition.
  • Emmanuel Joseph SieyèsA Catholic priest who scorned religion wrote the French Revolution's rallying cry.
  • Andreas VesaliusAndreas Vesalius, at 28, published a book showing that Galen had mostly described animal insides.
  • Raymond QueneauRaymond Queneau calculated that his book of sonnets would take 190,258,751 years to read nonstop.
  • Alexis de TocquevilleAlexis de Tocqueville was sent to America to study prisons. He went far beyond that and wrote a book on democracy.
  • Pierre de RonsardSudden deafness in 1540 ended Pierre de Ronsard's career as a diplomat's aide.
  • Yves BonnefoyYves Bonnefoy refused to call himself a poet. He said he was a critic or a historian.
  • Gabriel MarcelGabriel Marcel wrote at least thirty plays, but readers kept turning to his philosophy.
  • Charles-François LebrunA relative stole the record of his prosecution, saving Charles-François Lebrun from the guillotine.
  • Vincent CroninVincent Cronin's history books sold well, but scholars did not always welcome them.
  • Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-PérigordNapoleon called his own diplomat "shit in a silk stocking." Talleyrand had secretly worked against him.
  • Jules MicheletHistorian Jules Michelet was the first to use "Renaissance" for a whole era.
  • Louis de BroglieCould matter behave like a wave, as light can behave like a particle? Louis de Broglie asked this in 1924.
  • Juan Luis VivesJuan Luis Vives wrote the first Western tract arguing that the state must help the urban poor.

Queue