Philippe Starck recalls spending his childhood underneath his father's drawing boards; hours spent sawing, cutting, gluing, sanding, dismantling bikes, motor cycles and other objects. Endless hours, a whole lifetime spent taking apart and p...

Alain Aspect is a French physicist noted for his experimental work on quantum entanglement. In the early 1980s, while working on his PhD thesis from the lesser academic rank of lecturer, he performed the elusive "Bell test experiments" that...

Brigitte Bardot is a French actress and model, daughter of an industrialist. Also known simply as BB ("Bri-Bri" in childhood) she is considered the embodiment of the 1950s "sex kitten." Bardot starred with Trintignant in Vadim's film And...

Jean-Luc Godard is a Franco-Swiss filmmaker and one of the most influential members of the Nouvelle Vague, or "French New Wave". Born in Paris to Franco-Swiss parents, he was educated in Nyon, later studying at the Lycée Rohmer, and the Sor...

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy. His prolific output of...

Paul-Michel Doria Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form...

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music and a conductor. He is one of the leaders of the post–World War II musical modernism. His compositions have enriched musical culture, and his advocacy of modern and postmode...

Benoît B. Mandelbrot was a Franco-American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, acquiring dual French and American...

Claude Lévi-Strauss is a French anthropologist who developed structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture. Outside anthropology, his works have had a large influence on contemporary thought, in particular on the prac...

Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existent...

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, widely regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources...

Regarded as one of the greatest photographers of his time, Henri Cartier-Bresson was a shy Frenchman who elevated "snap shooting" to the level of a refined and disciplined art. His sharp-shooter’s ability to catch "the decisive moment," his...

Josephine Baker was an American-born French entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion...

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one...

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist, and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the U.S. National Book Aw...