43 20th century French people

Antoni Cierplikowski was a Polish hairdresser who became the world's first celebrity hairdresser when he opened the salon Antoine de Paris in Paris and became known as Monsieur Antoine. Among his clients were world-famous female personalities like Coco Chanel, Queen Marie of Romania, Sarah Bernhardt, Greta Garbo, U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Brigitte Bardot.

Léonie Aviat, her religious name Françoise de Sales, was a Roman Catholic professed religious and the co-founder along with Louis Brisson of the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales.

Princess Béatrice Marie Caroline Louise Françoise of Bourbon-Two Sicilies is the eldest daughter of Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Castro, Castro-line claimant to the headship of the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, and his wife, Chantal de Chevron-Villette.

Laurent Berger is a French trade unionist. He has been the general secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT) since November 28, 2012.

Alfred Binet, born Alfredo Binetti, was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the Binet–Simon test. In 1904, the French Ministry of Education asked psychologist Alfred Binet to devise a method that would determine which students did not learn effectively from regular classroom instruction so they could be given remedial work. Along with his collaborator Théodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his test in 1908 and 1911, the last of which appeared just before his death.

Elizabeth Bonnin is a French-Irish science, wildlife and natural history presenter, who has worked on television in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. She is also a biochemist and wild animal biologist. She presented morning show RI:SE and music show Top of the Pops in the early 2000s.

Gabrielle Bossis was a French Catholic laywoman, actress and mystic, best known for her mystical work Lui et Moi, published in English translation as He and I. The book recounts her dialogues with Jesus, which came to her as an "inner voice" and which she recorded in a series of journals from 1936 to shortly before her death in 1950. Some sample thoughts of the book are: 1. Express Your hope in me. Come out of yourself. Enter into Me. 2. Do not fail to give Me your sufferings. They help sinners. 3. I asked you to wake up in the arms of the Father because each one of your mornings is a new creation. 4. I asked you to fall asleep in the Holy Spirit because your last conscious breath should be in love. 5. Try to understand My yearning for you, for all My children. 6. You see that you can do nothing by yourself. Throw yourself into My arms every morning and ask Me for strength to pay attention to the little details. Life is made up of little things, you know. Don't count on yourself any more. Count on me. 7. When the love of the cross sinks deep into a person, he lives in a joy that the world can never know. For the world has only pleasures, but joy belongs to Me and Mine, My friend.

Louis Brisson was a French Roman Catholic priest and the founder of both the Oblate Sisters of Saint Francis de Sales and the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales. He founded the female branch alongside Léonie Aviat and the male branch alongside the Servant of God Thérèse Chappuis. Brisson's founding of the orders stemmed from his desire to improve the working conditions of middle-class girls and to ensure their protection and the promotion of their faith.

Marcel Callo was a French Roman Catholic from Rennes who served in Catholic organizations – in particular the Young Christian Workers (Jocists) – devoted to charitable works to the poor and to communities in general. Callo served as an apprentice at a print store from the age of thirteen before joining Catholic associations in France. He was conscripted to serve during World War II and the Gestapo arrested him in 1944 for his Christian activities. He died in the camps after being forced to do long hours of labour.

Jules Carpentier was a French engineer and inventor.

Pierre-Joseph Cassant was a French Roman Catholic priest and professed member of the Trappists. During his novitiate he received the religious name of Marie-Joseph and was known for his strong determination to his studies to fulfil his lifelong wish of being ordained to the priesthood.

François-Léon Clergue - in religious Marie-Antoine de Lavaur - was a French Roman Catholic priest and professed member from the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. He became a popular priest who attracted large crowds when he would preach; he preached around 700 itinerant missions in southern France which would earn him a nickname as the "Apostle of the South". He is also credited with the development of pilgrimages to the shrine in Lourdes where he often visited to preach and to tend to the visiting pilgrims. He was a traditionalist who railed against secularist influences and remained in France in 1880 when religious orders were expelled to other European nations; he remained in his deserted convent earning him respect from the authorities who refused to expel him due to his popular rapport with the locals.

Léon-Gustave Dehon - in religious Jean of the Sacred Heart - was a French Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Dehon's focus in his ecclesial life was to express his closeness with workers but above all wished to foster and promote a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It also became his mission to establish an order that would be dedicated to this task as well as to working in the foreign and diocesan missions in France and abroad. But impediments caused the order's dissolution though was later reformed and reestablished with Dehon assuming its leadership until his death.

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French actor and businessman. He is known as one of Europe's most prominent actors and screen sex symbols from the 1960s and 1970s. He achieved critical acclaim for roles in films such as Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Plein Soleil (1960), L'Eclisse (1962), The Leopard (1963), The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965), Lost Command (1966) and Le Samouraï (1967). Over the course of his career Delon worked with many well-known directors, including Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni and Louis Malle. He acquired Swiss citizenship in 1999.

Max Deutsch was an Austrian-French composer, conductor, and academic teacher. He studied with Arnold Schönberg and was his assistant. Teaching at the Sorbonne and the École Normale de Musique de Paris, he influenced notable students such as Philippe Capdenat, Donald Harris, György Kurtág and Philippe Manoury.

Countess Elisabeth Dobrzensky of Dobrzenicz was a Bohemian noblewoman whose marriage to the son of the former heiress to the throne of Brazil prompted renunciation of his claim to the abolished monarchy's throne.

Léon-Étienne Duval was a French prelate and cardinal of the Catholic Church in Algeria. He served as Archbishop of Algiers from 1954 to 1988, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1965.

Claire Ferchaud, in religion Sister Claire of Jesus Crucified was a French visionary and mystic, whose claims were ultimately rejected by the Catholic Church. She was linked to the Devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus during World War I.

Eugénie Fougère was a French frequenter of the demi-monde. She was notorious for her luxurious jewelry and costumes.

Jean-Baptiste Fouque was a French Roman Catholic priest. He tended to the poor during his time as a parish priest in Marseilles and was noted for his desire to create a large and free hospital for them. He achieved this in 1921 and tended to the old and infirm in the hospital. Fouque also was known for his ministering to displaced peoples during World War I and for his commitment to evangelization.

Arnaud Gouillon is a French and Serbian humanitarian and the founder of Solidarité Kosovo, a French non-governmental humanitarian organization devoted to helping Serbs living in enclaves in Kosovo.

Jules A. Hoffmann is a Luxembourg-born French biologist. During his youth, growing up in Luxembourg, he developed a strong interest in insects under the influence of his father, Jos Hoffmann. This eventually resulted in the younger Hoffmann's dedication to the field of biology using insects as model organisms. He currently holds a faculty position at the University of Strasbourg. He is a research director and member of the board of administrators of the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in Strasbourg, France. He was elected to the positions of Vice-President (2005-2006) and President (2007-2008) of the French Academy of Sciences. Hoffmann and Bruce Beutler were jointly awarded a half share of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity,". [More specifically, the work showing increased Drosomycin expression following activation of Toll pathway in microbial infection.]

Fernand Holweck was a French physicist who made important contributions in the fields of vacuum technology, electromagnetic radiation and gravitation. He is also remembered for his personal sacrifice in the cause of the French Resistance and his aid to Allied airmen in World War II.

Benjamin Jekhowsky was a Russian–French astronomer, born in Saint-Petersburg in a noble family of a Russian railroad official.

Joachim Joseph Napoléon Murat, 4th Prince Murat was a Major-General in the French Army and a member of the Bonaparte-Murat family.

Joachim Louis Napoléon Murat, 8th Prince Murat is a member of the Bonaparte-Murat family and the current head of the Murat family. He is an important figure in the Napoleonic circles and is very much involved in the commemoration of the Imperial memory. A long time collector of art, he was also the owner and founder of the Museum and Center of Contemporary Art Prince Murat of Nointel (1982-1987).

Julius Albert Köhl was a French-Swedish chef de cuisine.

André Lefèvre (1887–1946) was National Commissioner of the Éclaireurs de France from 1922 to 1940. In the 1930s, Lefèvre set up a training camp for 60 Scoutmasters from all over French Indochina. He was a participant in the 5th World Scout Jamboree in Vogelenzang, Netherlands in 1937, where he was in charge of the French Delegation, inclusive of the Scouts de France, Éclaireurs Unionistes, and his own Éclaireurs de France, and wore an armband on which the badges of all three associations was embroidered. He was a recipient of the Silver Wolf.

Lucien Lévy was a French radio engineer and radio receiver manufacturer. He invented the superheterodyne method of amplifying radio signals, used in almost all AM radio receivers. His patent claim was at first disallowed in the United States in favour of the American Edwin Howard Armstrong, but on appeal Lévy's claim as inventor was accepted in the US.

Marie-Eugene de L'Enfant-Jésus - born Henri Grialou - was a French Roman Catholic priest and a professed member of the Discalced Carmelites of which he was a member of since just after his ordination. Grialou held several positions of leadership within his congregation and was an extensive traveler as a manager of a range of different Carmelite convents and monasteries across the world. He was the founder of the Secular Institute of Notre-Dame de Vie. Grialou was also a noted spiritual writer and wrote at great length on the Carmelite charism as well as on a range of Carmelite luminaries.

Carlos de Dios Murias and his two companions Gabriel Longueville and Wenceslao Pedernera were two priests and a married man who were killed in the La Rioja province in Argentina. Murias was a professed member from the Order of Friars Minor Conventual and Longueville was a priest incardinated in the Viviers diocese in France before moving to Argentina where he was incardinated into the La Rioja diocese. The two worked together in a La Rioja parish before their deaths while Pedernera, who served as a lay catechist, was married with three daughters and was slain in front of them.

Louis-Joseph Maurin was a Roman Catholic Cardinal and Archbishop of Lyon.

Elisabeth Jenny Jeanne "Betty" Maxwell was a French-born researcher on the Holocaust who established the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 1987. She was married to publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell from 1945 until his death in 1991 when the family soon came under scrutiny for his business dealings, especially his responsibility for the Mirror Group pension scandal. Later in life, she was recognized for her work as a proponent of Interfaith dialogue and received several awards including an honorary fellowship from the Woolf Institute at Cambridge.

Ferdinand Frédéric Henri Moissan was a French chemist and pharmacist who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds. Moissan was one of the original members of the International Atomic Weights Committee.

Blanche Monnier, often known in the country of France as la Séquestrée de Poitiers, was a woman from Poitiers, Vienne, France, who was secretly kept locked in a small room by her aristocratic mother for 25 years. She was eventually found by police, then middle-aged and in an emaciated and filthy condition; according to officials, Monnier had not seen any sunlight for her entire captivity.

Fernand Petzl was a caver and manufacturer of outdoor equipment under the brand name Petzl.

Robin Renucci is a French film and television actor and film director.

Raymond Schlemmer was a seminal figure in the early history of Scouting in France, from 1922 to 1952.

Nicolas Schöffer was a Hungarian-born French cybernetic artist.

Jokūbas Bernardas Šernas, commonly known as Jacques Sernas and sometimes credited as Jack Sernas, was a Lithuanian-born French actor with an international film career.

Laurent Terzieff was a French actor.

Maria Torok was a French psychoanalyst of Hungarian descent.

Georges Urbain was a French chemist, a professor of the Sorbonne, a member of the Institut de France, and director of the Institute of Chemistry in Paris. Much of his work focused on the rare earths, isolating and separating elements such as europium and gadolinium, and studying their spectra, their magnetic properties and their atomic masses. He discovered the element lutetium. He also studied the efflorescence of saline hydrates.