Curated category
University of Paris alumni
- Thomas AquinasThomas Aquinas was the youngest of nine children, and his family had a plan for him. His brothers would be soldiers. He would follow his uncle Sinibald…
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot wrote the opening of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" when he was twenty-two years old. The lines compared an evening sky to "a patient…
- André de GouveiaAndré de Gouveia entered the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris during the early 1500s. He was one of the first Portuguese students to study there under his uncle…
- Denis DiderotDenis Diderot was born on the 5th of October 1713 in Langres, Champagne, the son of a cutler named Didier Diderot. He died on the 31st of July 1784, having…
- 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.
- John CalvinJohn Calvin once described God's predestination as a decree dreadful indeed, writing in Latin, "Decretum quidem horribile, fateor." This was a man who could…
- Ignatius of LoyolaIgnatius of Loyola was born Iñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola in a castle in the Basque municipality of Azpeitia, the youngest of thirteen children in a minor…
- Diogo de GouveiaDiogo de Gouveia was born in Beja around the year 1471. He entered Paris in 1499 to study at the Collège de Montaigu. Two scholarships from Jan Standonck…
- 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…
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard once said: "A film consists of a beginning, a middle and an end, though not necessarily in that order." That line, delivered with the offhand…
- Francis XavierFrancis Xavier died early in December 1552, in a small hut on the Chinese island of Shangchuan, fourteen kilometres from the mainland he so badly wanted to…
- Joseph CampbellJoseph Campbell once told a packed lecture hall that if you follow your bliss, a track that has been there all the while will open up beneath your feet.
- 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…
- Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir did not consider herself a philosopher, and at the time of her death in 1986 the world did not call her one either.
- Jacques-Louis DavidJacques-Louis David was born in Paris on the 30th of August 1748, into a world of powdered wigs, gilded ceilings, and a painting style built on prettiness.
- ErasmusDesiderius Erasmus woke before dawn, ink already on his fingers, and on a busy day he wrote or answered as many as forty letters in his own hand.
- Antoine LavoisierOn the 8th of May 1794, in Paris, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier was guillotined alongside 27 co-defendants, at the age of 50.
- Jan AssmannJohann Christoph Assmann, known as Jan, was born on the 7th of July 1938 in Germany. He studied Egyptology and classical archaeology across four cities…
- Antoine-Jean GrosAntoine-Jean Gros was born in Paris on the 16th of March 1771, the son of two painters, in a city on the edge of revolution.
- Emmanuel Joseph SieyèsEmmanuel Joseph Sieyès published a slim pamphlet in January 1789 and, within months, helped bring down a social order that had stood for centuries.
- Andreas VesaliusAndreas Vesalius was born on the 31st of December 1514 in Brussels, and by the time he was 28 years old, he had produced a book that would upend more than a…
- Raymond QueneauRaymond Queneau once calculated that a reader working through his book A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, around the clock every day without stopping, would…
- 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…
- Pierre de RonsardPierre de Ronsard was born on the 11th of September 1524 at the Manoir de la Possonnière, a country estate in the village of Couture-sur-Loir, in the…
- Yves BonnefoyYves Bonnefoy was born on the 24th of June 1923 in Tours, and by the time he died in Paris on the 1st of July 2016, the Encyclopaedia Britannica had called…
- Gabriel MarcelGabriel Honoré Marcel was born on the 7th of December 1889 in Paris, and by the time he died on the 8th of October 1973 he had written more than a dozen…
- Charles-François LebrunCharles-François Lebrun was born on the 19th of March 1739 in Saint-Sauveur-Lendelin, a small town in the Manche region of France, and he would live to see…
- Vincent CroninVincent Archibald Patrick Cronin entered the world on the 24th of May 1924 in Tredegar, Monmouthshire. His father was A.J.
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-PérigordCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was born on the 2nd of February 1754, and he died on the 17th of May 1838, having served every major French government…
- Jules MicheletJules Michelet died on the 9th of February 1874, in the southern French town of Hyères, from a heart attack. He left behind nineteen volumes of French…
- 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…
- Juan Luis VivesOn the 6th of March 1493, a boy named Juan Luis Vives was born in Valencia to a family that had converted from Judaism to Christianity decades before.