I realise that I may be looking for trouble here, mais merde, tant pis.
I’ll throw in a few Enlightenment philosophers, because they did kick off a hell of a lot of good stuff and I’m proud of the boys:
Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Montesquieu.
And let’s season that with Louis Pasteur, Blaise Pascal, Marie Curie, Albert Camus and on a lighter note, Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Phillippe.
OK, bring it on, you Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialist swine!
Asterix the Gaul.
I give up.
Male: George Antheil, composer of Ballet Mechanique and the Airplane Sonata.
Female: Julia Child, the French Chef.
Wait a sec…I want to change my answer.
The greatest Frenchman that ever lived was…
Le Petomaine
You can read all about his fartistry here:
I would rather put Maria Sklodowska-Curie on list about great Polish men and women.
Napoleon
Vive La Republique!
(In seriousness though he definitely has a claim on greatness…)
Pasteur, without a doubt.
Lots will go for Napoleon, but he was nothing more than a megalomaniac tyrant (as was Alexander teh Great but that’s another thread), responsible for the deaths of millions. Think Hitler and you catch my drift…
Napoleon is a tricky one - because it depends on your point of view.
if Elizabeth I and Cromwell can get into the english top ten then Boney has a claim on the French position.
Speaking as a brit, yes he was an evil guy who needed a good British kicking, but from the French point of view things maybe different…
Howzabout Descartes? And I’ve always admired this guy.
How about Charlemagne? Charles the Great, it’s his name. Yes I know he was Frankish, not French.
Has anyone here read “Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed”? I would nominate the Trocmes, who are described in that book.
Though if it were limited to very famous people–I’d say Descartes and maybe Joan of Arc.
Charles De Gaulle, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, Jeanne d’Arc, Richelieu, Mazarin, Jean-Jacques Colbert, Napoleon
Jacques Louis-David
Jean-Paul Sartre
Auguste Rodin
More cool (or not-so-cool-but-important-anyway) French persons… (two courtesy of bristlesage)
Vercingetorix (Okay, a Gaul, but hey, it would be France eventually)
Bertrand Du Guesclin
Claude Monet
Hector Berlioz
Edgar Degas
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec
Camille Flammarion
Charles Messier
Joseph Fourier
Antoine Lavoisier
Marquis Pierre-Simon De Laplace
Jean-François de Galoup, Comte de La Pérouse
Simone De Beauvior
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Frederic Bartholdi
Gustave Eiffel
Guy de Maupassant
Victor Hugo
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)
Claude Debussy
Beldar and Primat Conehead.
Man: Napoleon
Woman: Laetitia Casta
I’m not sure he’s the greatest frenchman ever, but he’s certainly the contemporary I admire the most (and I very rarely feel admiration):
Theodore Monod , who was a geologist but also interestedin sociology, geography, etc…and had a passion for Africa in general and the Sahara in particular.During his life, he always was politically on the “right” side (during the occupation of France in particular). Past the age of 90, he was still making expeditions in the Sahara. Unfortunately, he died a coupleof years ago. He’s probably the only french public figure the death of actually saddened me.