List of École Normale Supérieure people

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

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

Contents 1 Alumni 1.1 Nobel laureates 1.2 Fields Medal laureates 1.3 Sciences 1.3.1 Medicine and biology 1.3.2 Physics 1.3.3 Mathematics 1.4 Humanities 1.4.1 Philosophy 1.4.2 Sociology 1.4.3 Literature 1.4.4 Literary criticism 1.4.5 History 1.4.6 Economics 1.4.7 Government and public policy 1.4.8 Business 2 Faculty 3 Sources 4 References

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 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
• Cédric Villani (1992): 2010 Fields Medalist
• Ngô Bảo Châu (1992): 2010 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)
• René-Louis Baire
• Émile Borel (1889)
• François Bruhat
• Élie Cartan (1888)
• Henri Cartan (1923), cofounder of Bourbaki
• Pierre Cartier
• Claude Chevalley (1926), cofounder of Bourbaki
• Gustave Choquet
• Jean-Louis Colliot-Thélène
• Pierre Colmez
• Antoine Augustin Cournot
• Jean Gaston Darboux
• Jean Delsarte, cofounder of Bourbaki
• Arnaud Denjoy
• Jean Dieudonné (1924), cofounder of Bourbaki
• Adrien Douady (1954)
• Paul Dubreil
• Charles Ehresmann (1927), cofounder of Bourbaki
• Pierre Fatou (1898)
• Maurice René Fréchet
• Évariste Galois (1829), originated Galois theory
• Roger Godement (1940)
• Édouard Goursat
• Jacques Hadamard (1884)
• Jacques Herbrand (1925)
• Luc Illusie
• Marie-Louise Jacotin
• Hervé Jacquet
• Gaston Julia
• Vincent Lafforgue
• Gérard Laumon
• Henri Lebesgue (1894)
• Jean-François Le Gall
• Jean Leray (1926)
• Jacques-Louis Lions (1950)
• Édouard Lucas
• Szolem Mandelbrojt, cofounder of Bourbaki
• Loïc Merel
• Yves Meyer
• André Néron (1943)
• Joseph Oesterlé
• Paul Painlevé (1883)
• Mihailo Petrović (1890)
• René de Possel, cofounder of Bourbaki
• Charles Émile Picard
• Michel Raynaud
• Sylvia Serfaty
• Gheorghe Tzitzeica
• Paul Vidal de la Blache (1863), considered as the founder of French modern geography
• Claire Voisin
• Jean-Loup Waldspurger (1980)
• Jean-Pierre Wintenberger
• 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 Collège de France
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1926), phenomenologist
• Jean Hyppolite, founder of Hegelian studies in France
• Jacques Rancière (1960), philosopher
• Philippe-Joseph Salazar (1975), rhetorician, member of College international de philosophie
• Hippolyte Taine (1893)
• Simone Weil (1928), philosopher and mystic

Sociology

• Jean-Michel Berthelot (1966)
• Pierre Bourdieu (1951)
• Raymond Boudon (1951)
• Émile 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 and film-maker
• Jean Giraudoux (1903), playwright
• Julien Gracq (1930), novelist and literary critic
• Sabiha Al Khemir (1982), writer, illustrator and expert in Islamic art
• Paul Nizan (1924)
• Charles Péguy (1894), poet
• Jules Romains (1906), novelist
• Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt (1980)

Literary criticism

• Jean-Pierre Richard (1941)
• Gérard Genette (1951)

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
• Henri Hauser (1885), economic historian
• Jacques Le Goff (1945), medievalist
• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (1949), historian
• Paul Mantoux (1894), economic historian
• Neil MacGregor, art historian, Director of the British Museum
• Jacques Soustelle (1929), ethnologist

Economics

• Yves Balasko (1964)
• Thomas Piketty (1989)
• Emmanuel Saez (1992)
• Xavier Gabaix (1991)
• Esther Duflo (1992)

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
• Michel Sapin, Deputy Minister of Justice from May 1991 to April 1992, Finance Minister from April 1992 to March 1993, and Minister of Civil Servants and State Reforms from March 2000 to May 2002.^[1]
• Laurent Wauquiez (1994)

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
• Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges
• Jacques Derrida
• Alfred Des Cloizeaux
• Laurent Freidel
• Jacques Lacan
• Ernest Lavisse
• Alfred Kastler (1966 Nobel Prize in Physics)
• Thomas MacGreevy
• Jacqueline de Romilly
• Jean-Pierre Serre (1954 Fields Medal)

Sources

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

References

1. ^ National Assembly biography