Historical Figures from France

Novelist · 1802 – 1870

Alexandre Dumas was a French writer whose swashbuckling historical novels — The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo — became some of the most popular and widely adapted stories in the world.

• The Three Musketeers
• The Count of Monte Cristo

Painter · 1840 – 1926

Claude Monet was a French painter and the leading founder of Impressionism, whose studies of light and atmosphere — from Impression, Sunrise to the Water Lilies — revolutionized modern painting.

• Impressionism
• Impression, Sunrise

Novelist · 1828 – 1905

Jules Verne was a French novelist whose pioneering adventure stories — including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days — helped found science fiction and imagined technologies decades before they existed.

• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
• Around the World in Eighty Days

Chemist · 1822 – 1895

Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist whose work on germ theory, vaccination, and pasteurization revolutionized medicine and saved countless lives.

• Germ theory of disease
• Pasteurization

Novelist · 1871 – 1922

Marcel Proust was a French novelist whose monumental seven-volume In Search of Lost Time is one of the most celebrated novels of the 20th century, transforming fiction with its exploration of memory, time and consciousness.

• In Search of Lost Time
• Involuntary memory

Essayist · 1533 – 1592

Michel de Montaigne was a French Renaissance thinker and nobleman who invented the essay as a literary form, using candid self-examination to explore the human condition with unmatched honesty and wit.

• The Essais
• Inventing the essay

Playwright · 1622 – 1673

Molière was a French playwright and actor of the 17th century, the supreme master of comedy in the French language, whose satires of hypocrisy and vanity remain among the most performed plays in the world.

• Tartuffe
• The Misanthrope

Military Leader · 1769 – 1821

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose during the French Revolution, crowned himself Emperor, and dominated European affairs for over a decade.

• Napoleonic Wars
• The Napoleonic Code

Philosopher · 1596 – 1650

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, the "father of modern philosophy", famous for "I think, therefore I am" and for founding analytic geometry.

• I think, therefore I am
• Analytic geometry

Novelist · 1802 – 1885

Victor Hugo was a French novelist, poet, and dramatist, the towering figure of French Romanticism, whose novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame are monuments of world literature.

• Les Misérables
• The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Writer · 1694 – 1778

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher and wit, a tireless champion of reason, free speech and religious tolerance and one of the most influential figures of his age.

• Candide
• Defending free speech and tolerance