List of Famous people born in France

Sous-lieutenant Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot was a French mechanical engineer in the French Army, military scientist and physicist, and often described as the "father of thermodynamics." Like Copernicus, he published only one book, the Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, in which he expressed, at the age of 27 years, the first successful theory of the maximum efficiency of heat engines. In this work, he laid the foundations of an entirely new discipline: thermodynamics. Carnot's work attracted little attention during his lifetime, but it was later used by Rudolf Clausius and Lord Kelvin to formalize the second law of thermodynamics and define the concept of entropy. His father used the suffix Sadi to name him because of his intense interest in the character of Saadi Shirazi, a well-known Iranian poet. Based on purely technical concerns, such as improving the performance of the steam engine, Sadi Carnot's intellect laid the groundwork for modern science technological designs, such as the automobile or jet engine.

Michèle Rivasi is a French politician who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2009, for Europe Écologie–The Greens.

Camille Chat Aka The Neck is a French professional rugby union player. His position is hooker, and he currently plays for Racing 92 in the Top 14. He was named in the French squad for the 2016 Six Nations Championship.

Ambroise Michel is a French actor, director and writer.

Bertrand Herz was a French engineer and university teacher of Jewish origin. He performed forced labor as a teenager at the Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II. Since 2001, he has been general secretary of the French Association française Buchenwald Dora et Kommandos and he was president of the international committee Buchenwald-Dora and Kommandos between 2001 and 2016.

Raymonde Tillon was a French politician. She was affiliated with the French Communist Party and was in the French Resistance during the Second World War.

Héloïse, variously Héloïse d'Argenteuil, Héloïse du Paraclet; was a French nun, philosopher, writer, scholar, and abbess.

Alain Touraine is a French sociologist. He is research director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he founded the Centre d'étude des mouvements sociaux. Touraine was an important figure in the founding of French sociology of work after World War II and later became an internationally-renowned sociologist of social movements, particularly the May 68 student movement in France and the Solidarity trade-union movement in communist Poland.

Gaël Dimitri Clichy is a French professional footballer who plays for Swiss Super League club Servette and formerly for the France national team. He primarily plays as a left-back, being also capable of playing as an offensive-minded wing-back. He is predominantly left footed, but naturally right footed. Earlier in his career, he was described as a player who possesses "almost unrivaled stamina" that is "quick in the tackle and willing to drive forward".

Marcelle Duc, known professionally as Hélène Duc, was a French actress. She appeared in Edward and Caroline (1951), Je sais rien, mais je dirai tout (1973), and Tanguy (2001).