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French designer Thierry Mugler was initially known for his skills in ballet and drawing. He began his fashion career working for a boutique in Paris and later launched his brand. He is known for his peculiar clothes, inspired by birds and insects, and made of metal and crystals.
Marie Tussaud was a French artist and sculptor best remembered for her wax sculptures. She founded Madame Tussauds, a wax museum, in London in 1835. The museum is a major tourist attraction today. As a young girl, she learned wax modeling from doctor cum wax modeler Philippe Curtius. In the ensuing years, she became a prominent sculptor.
Best known for his wood-engraving, Gustave Doré was a child prodigy who began his artwork at the tender age of 5. A master lithographer and caricaturist, he began his career with Journal pour Rire. He also worked on commissions from authors such as Cervantes, Milton, and Dante.
French singer Matthieu Tota, better known as M. Pokora, is often compared to singers such as Justin Timberlake for his singing style. Though initially aspiring to be a footballer, he later found success in music after winning the show Popstars. He has also starred as Robin Hood in a French musical.
Known widely as Turkey’s most popular female author, Elif Shafak is best known for her Booker-shortlisted bestseller 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. A fierce advocate for gender equality and LGBTQ rights, she is also a 3-time TEDGlobal speaker. She now lives in London, on a self-imposed exile.
Jean Arp was born in Strasbourg, to a German father and a French mother. After studying art in Paris and Switzerland, he co-created The Modern Alliance and participated in the Dada and Abstraction-Création movements. An avant-garde painter and sculptor, he also experimented with media such as embroidery.
A physiology professor’s son, Hans Bethe had shown immense talent in math as a child. The German-American theoretical physicist and Cornell professor was a pioneer of quantum physics and later won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his research on stellar nucleosynthesis, or the formation of energy in stars.
Charles de Foucauld was a cavalry officer in the French Army in the late 19th century. He later became an explorer and geographer, eventually adopting the life of a hermit and a Catholic priest. He was assassinated in 1916 and is listed as a martyr in the liturgy of the Catholic Church.
Pio Marmai is a French actor known for his performance in films like The First Day of the Rest of Your Life, Living on Love Alone, and The Trouble With You. Marmai has so far received three nominations for the prestigious César Award. He is widely regarded as one of the most promising young actors in France.
Charles Frédéric Gerhardt was a French chemist. He developed an early interest in chemistry and studied the subject under German chemist Otto Linné Erdmann. He later went to Paris and attended Jean Baptiste Dumas’ lectures before embarking on an academic career. He is best known for his work on reforming the notation for chemical formulas.
Charles Friedel was a French chemist and mineralogist. He studied under famed chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur at the Sorbonne. He later obtained the post of professor of chemistry and mineralogy at the Sorbonne. He collaborated with James Crafts to develop the Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation reactions. His son Georges also became a renowned mineralogist.
