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 that may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

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)
Serge Haroche (1963) (2012 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

Mathematics

Humanities

Jean Bousquet (1931) Classicist, archaeologist (Delphi excavations) and Director of ENS

Philosophy

Louis Althusser (1939), Marxist philosopher
Raymond Aron (1924), political philosopher, founder of French conservative thought post-1960
Alain Badiou, philosopher
Étienne Balibar (1960), philosopher and linguist
Georges Canguilhem (1924), philosopher of science
Jean Cavaillès (1923), philosopher and Résistance hero
Emile Auguste Chartier "Alain" (1889), philosopher
André Comte-Sponville (1972), philosopher and essayist
Victor Cousin (1810), spiritualist philosopher and historian of philosophy
Jacques Derrida (1952), founder of deconstruction
Michel Foucault (1946), Historian of Systems of Thought, member of Collège de France
Georges Gusdorf (1933), philosopher and historian of ideas
Jean Hyppolite (1924), founder of Hegelian studies in France
Vladimir Jankélévitch (1922), philosopher, musicologist
Quentin Meillassoux, philosopher
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1926), phenomenologist
Jacques Rancière (1960), philosopher
Philippe-Joseph Salazar (1975), rhetorician, member of College international de philosophie
Jean-Paul Sartre (1924), philosopher, novelist, playwright, journalist
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
Marie Darrieussecq (1990), novelist
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
Claude Ribbe (1974), historian and novelist
Romain Rolland (1886), novelist
Jules Romains (1906), novelist
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt (1980)

Literary criticism

History

Marc Bloch (1904), cofounder of the Annales School
Jérôme Carcopino (1901), specialist of Roman Antiquity
Jacqueline de Romilly (1933), specialist of the history and literature of Ancient Greece
Georges Dumézil (1916), specialist of Proto-Indo-European society and creator of the trifunctional hypothesis
Lucien Febvre (1899), cofounder of the Annales School
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, 1850, specialist of classical and mediaeval history
Marcel Granet (1904), sinologist
Pierre Grimal (1933), Latinist
Henri Hauser (1885), economic historian
Ernest Lavisse (1862), a founder of Positivist history
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

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
Benny Lévy (1965), Founder of Gauche prolétarienne
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 (1974), Finance Minister from April 1992 to March 1993, and Minister of Civil Servants and State Reforms from March 2000 to May 2002.^[1]
Bruno Le Maire (1989)
Laurent Wauquiez (1994)

Business

Anne Lauvergeon (1978) former 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

↑ National Assembly biography