List of École Normale Supérieure people

Here follows a list of notable alumni and faculty of the École Normale Supérieure. Dynamic list

Alumni

"The year when they entered the ENS is in parenthesis."

Nobel laureates

* Henri Bergson (1878) (1927 Nobel Prize in Literature)
* Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (1953, 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics)
* Gérard Debreu (1941) (1983 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel)
* Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1951, 1991 Nobel Prize in Physics)
* Albert Fert (1957, 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics)
* Alfred Kastler (1921, 1966 Nobel Prize in Physics)
* Gabriel Lippmann (1868, 1908 Nobel Prize in Physics)
* Louis Néel (1924, 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics)
* Jean-Baptiste Perrin (1891, 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics)
* Romain Rolland (1886 , 1915 Nobel Prize in Literature)
* Paul Sabatier (1874, 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry)
* Jean-Paul Sartre (1924, declined 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature)

Fields Medal laureates

All French holders of the Fields Medal mathematics award were educated at the École Normale Supérieure
* Laurent Schwartz (1934): 1950 Fields Medalist
* Jean-Pierre Serre (1945): 1954 Fields Medalist
* René Thom (1943): 1958 Fields Medalist
* Alain Connes (1966): 1982 Fields Medalist
* Jean-Christophe Yoccoz (1975): 1994 Fields Medalist
* Pierre-Louis Lions (1975): 1994 Fields Medalist
* Laurent Lafforgue (1986): 2002 Fields Medalist
* Wendelin Werner (1987): 2006 Fields Medalist

Sciences

Medicine and biology

* Stanislas Dehaene (1984) (Current Chair of Experimental Psychology at the Collège de France)
* Louis Pasteur (1843), chemist and microbiologist, confirmed the germ theory of disease

Physics

* Édouard Branly (1865)
* Marcel Brillouin (1878)
* Léon Brillouin
* Hubert Curien (1945)
* Thomas Fink
* Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
* Paul Langevin (1894)
* Yves Rocard
* Georges Sagnac (1889)

Mathematics

* Paul Emile Appell (1872)
* Cahit Arf (1932)
* Émile Borel (1889)
* Élie Cartan (1888)
* Henri Cartan (1923), cofounder of Bourbaki
* Claude Chevalley (1926)
* Antoine Augustin Cournot
* Jean Gaston Darboux
* Jean Dieudonné (1924), cofounder of Bourbaki
* Adrien Douady (1954)
* Pierre Fatou (1898)
* Maurice René Fréchet
* Évariste Galois (1829), originated Galois theory
* Roger Godement (1940)
* Jacques Hadamard
* Jacques Herbrand (1925)
* Henri Lebesgue
* Jean Leray (1926)
* Édouard Lucas
* Szolem Mandelbrojt, cofounder of Bourbaki
* Paul Painlevé (1883)
* Mihailo Petrović (1890)
* Charles Émile Picard
* Gheorghe Tzitzeica
* Paul Vidal de la Blache (1863), considered as the founder of French modern geography
* André Weil (1922), cofounder of Bourbaki

Humanities

Philosophy

* Louis Althusser (1939), Marxist philosopher
* Raymond Aron (1924), political philosopher, founder of French conservative thought post-1960.
* Étienne Balibar (1960), philosopher and linguist
* Georges Canguilhem (1924), philosopher of science
* Emile Auguste Chartier "Alain" (1889), philosopher
* André Comte-Sponville (1972), philosopher and essayist
* Jean Cavaillès (1923), philosopher and Résistant, martyred by the Germans
* Jacques Derrida (1952), founder of deconstruction.
* Michel Foucault (1946), Historian of Systems of Thought, member of College de France
* Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1926), phenomenologist
* Jean Hyppolite, founder of Hegelian studies in France
* Philippe-Joseph Salazar (1975), rhetorician [http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe-Joseph_Salazar] , member of College international de philosophie
* Hippolyte Taine (1893)
* Simone Weil (1928), philosopher and mystic

Sociology

* Pierre Bourdieu (1951)
* Raymond Boudon
* Emile Durkheim (1879), considered the founder of French sociology

Literature

* Paul Bénichou (1927)
* Robert Brasillach, novelist, critic and pro-nazi collaborationist
* Aimé Césaire (1935), poet and politician
* Assia Djebar (1955), Algerian novelist anf film-malker
* Jean Giraudoux (1903), playwright
* Julien Gracq (1930), novelist and literary critic
* Paul Nizan (1924)
* Charles Péguy (1894), poet
* Jules Romains (1906), novelist
* Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt (1980)
* Léopold Sédar Senghor, poet and president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980

Literary criticism

* Gérard Genette
* Jean-Pierre Richard (1941)

History

* Marc Bloch (1904), cofounder of the Annales School
* Georges Dumézil (1916), specialist of Proto-Indo-European society and creator of the trifunctional hypothesis
* Lucien Febvre (1899), cofounder of the Annales School
* Marcel Granet (1904), sinologist
* Jacques Le Goff (1945), medievalist
* Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (1949), historian
* Neil MacGregor, art historian, Director of the British Museum
* Jacques Soustelle (1929), ethnologist

Government and public policy

* Léon Blum (1890) (expelled during his third year), First Socialist Prime Minister of France in 1936
* Pierre Brossolette (1922) (politician and resistant)
* Laurent Fabius (1966), Prime minister of France from 1984 to 1986
* Édouard Herriot (1891), Prime minister of France in 1924-1925, 1926 and 1932
* Jean Jaurès (1878) Socialist leader
* Alain Juppé (1964), Prime minister of France from 1995 to 1997
* Paul Painlevé (1883), mathematician and Prime minister of France in 1917 and 1925
* Georges Pompidou (1931), Prime minister of France from 1962 to 1968 and President of France from 1969 to 1974

Business

* Anne Lauvergeon (1978) President of Areva

Faculty

* Louis Althusser
* Alain Badiou
* Samuel Beckett (1969 Nobel Prize in Literature)
* Pierre Bonnet
* Paul Celan
* Victor Cousin
* John Coates
* Fustel de Coulanges
* Jacques Derrida
* Alfred Des Cloizeaux
* Laurent Freidel
* Jacques Lacan
* Ernest Lavisse
* Alfred Kastler
* Thomas MacGreevy
* Jacqueline de Romilly
* Jean-Pierre Serre

Sources

Dates of entrance at the ENS can be checked at http://www.archicubes.ens.fr/

References