The year when they entered the ENS is in parentheses. Nobel laureates •
Henri Bergson (1878) (1927
Nobel Prize in Literature) •
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (1953) (1997
Nobel Prize in Physics) •
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1951) (1991 Nobel Prize in Physics) •
Gérard Debreu (1941) (1983
Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) •
Albert Fert (1957) (2007 Nobel Prize in Physics) •
Serge Haroche (1963) (2012 Nobel Prize in Physics) •
Alfred Kastler (1921) (1966 Nobel Prize in Physics) •
Gabriel Lippmann (1868) (1908 Nobel Prize in Physics) •
Louis Néel (1924) (1970 Nobel Prize in Physics) •
Jean-Baptiste Perrin (1891) (1926 Nobel Prize in Physics) •
Romain Rolland (1886) (1915 Nobel Prize in Literature) •
Paul Sabatier (1874) (1912
Nobel Prize in Chemistry) •
Jean-Paul Sartre (1924) (declined 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature) •
Esther Duflo (2019 Nobel Prize in Economics)
Fields Medal laureates The following
Fields Medal recipients were educated at the École Normale Supérieure. •
Laurent Schwartz (1934): 1950 Fields Medalist •
Jean-Pierre Serre (1945): 1954 Fields Medalist •
René Thom (1943): 1958 Fields Medalist •
Alain Connes (1966): 1982 Fields Medalist •
Jean-Christophe Yoccoz (1975): 1994 Fields Medalist •
Pierre-Louis Lions (1975): 1994 Fields Medalist •
Laurent Lafforgue (1986): 2002 Fields Medalist •
Wendelin Werner (1987): 2006 Fields Medalist •
Cédric Villani (1992): 2010 Fields Medalist •
Ngô Bảo Châu (1992): 2010 Fields Medalist •
Hugo Duminil-Copin (2006): 2022 Fields Medalist
Sciences Chemistry •
David Zitoun (1999) •
Anna Fischer (2003)
Medicine and biology •
Stanislas Dehaene (1984), current Chair of Experimental Psychology at the
Collège de France •
Charles Chamberland, microbiologist, Known for
Chamberland filter •
Jean-Pierre Changeux, neuroscientist •
Louis Pasteur (1843), chemist and microbiologist, confirmed the
germ theory of disease Physics •
Édouard Branly (1865) •
Léon Brillouin •
Marcel Brillouin (1878) •
Monique Combescure •
Hubert Curien (1945) •
Thomas Fink •
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier •
Paul Langevin (1894) •
Yves Rocard (1922) •
Georges Sagnac (1889) •
Eugene Bloch •
Hamdy Doweidar Mathematics •
Nalini Anantharaman (1994) •
Roger Apéry (1936) •
Paul Emile Appell (1872) •
Cahit Arf (1932) •
Denis Auroux (1995) •
René-Louis Baire (1892) •
Arnaud Beauville (1966) •
Marcel Berger (1948) •
Pierre Berthelot (1962) •
Philippe Biane (1981) •
Émile Borel (1889) •
Louis Boutet de Monvel (1960) •
Emmanuel Breuillard (1997) •
Marcel Brillouin (1874) •
Jean-Luc Brylinski (1971) •
François Bruhat (1948) •
Élie Cartan (1888) •
Henri Cartan (1923), co-founder of
Bourbaki •
Pierre Cartier (1950) •
Claude Chevalley (1926), co-founder of Bourbaki •
Gustave Choquet (1934) •
Henri Cohen (1966) •
Yves Colin de Verdière (1964) •
Jean-Louis Colliot-Thélène (1966) •
Pierre Colmez (1981) •
Alain Connes (1966) •
Thierry Coquand (1980) •
Antoine Augustin Cournot (1821) •
Louis Couturat (1887) •
Jean Gaston Darboux (1891) •
Georges Darmois (1906) •
Patrick Dehornoy (1971) •
Jean Delsarte (1922), co-founder of Bourbaki •
Michel Demazure (1955) •
Arnaud Denjoy (1902) •
Jean Dieudonné (1924), co-founder of Bourbaki •
Jacques Dixmier (1942) •
Pierre Dolbeault (1944) •
Adrien Douady (1954) •
Paul Dubreil (1923) •
Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin (1926) •
Hugo Duminil-Copin (2005) •
Charles Ehresmann (1927), co-founder of Bourbaki •
Ivar Ekeland (1963) •
Nicole El Karoui (1964) •
Hélène Esnault (1973) •
Pierre Fatou (1898) •
Jacqueline Ferrand (1936) •
Étienne Fouvry (1972) •
Maurice René Fréchet (1900) •
Évariste Galois (1829), originated
Galois theory •
René Gateaux (1907) •
Roger Godement (1940) •
François Golse (1981) •
Édouard Goursat (1876) •
Alice Guionnet (1989) •
Jacques Hadamard (1884) •
Guy Henniart (1973) •
Jacques Herbrand (1925) •
Luc Illusie (1959) •
Hervé Jacquet (1959) •
Gaston Julia (1911) •
Fanny Kassel (2003) •
Jean-Louis Koszul (1940) •
François Labourie (1980) •
Vincent Lafforgue (1992) •
Gérard Laumon (1972) •
Jean-François Le Gall (1978) •
Henri Lebesgue (1894) •
Pierre Lelong (1931) •
Jean Leray (1926) •
André Lichnerowicz (1933) •
Jacques-Louis Lions (1950) •
François Loeser (1978) •
Édouard Lucas (1861) •
Bernard Malgrange (1947) •
Frank Merle (1982) •
Loïc Merel (1986) •
Paul-André Meyer (1954) •
Yves Meyer (1957) •
Paul Montel (1894) •
Sophie Morel (1999) •
André Néron (1943) •
Joseph Oesterlé (1973) •
Patrice Ossona de Mendez (1986) •
Henri Padé (1883) •
Paul Painlevé (1883) •
Bernadette Perrin-Riou (1974) •
Mihailo Petrović (1890) •
Charles Émile Picard (1874) •
Vincent Pilloni (2002) •
Charles Pisot (1929) •
Georges Poitou (1945) •
René de Possel (1923), co-founder of Bourbaki •
Victor Puiseux (1837) •
Michel Raynaud (1958) •
Raphaël Rouquier (1988) •
Laure Saint-Raymond (1994) •
Pierre Samuel (1940) •
Marie-Hélène Schwartz (1934) •
Sylvia Serfaty (1994) •
Jean-Claude Sikorav (1976) •
Christophe Soulé (1970) •
Jean-Marie Souriau (1942) •
Gheorghe Tzitzeica (1896) •
Jean-Louis Verdier (1955) •
Ernest Vessiot (1884) •
Paul Vidal de la Blache (1863), considered the founder of French modern geography •
Claire Voisin (1981) •
Jean-Loup Waldspurger (1972) •
André Weil (1922), co-founder of Bourbaki •
Jean-Pierre Wintenberger (1973) •
Nicușor Daniel Dan (1992), president of
Romania Humanities •
Jean Bousquet (1931), classicist, archaeologist (Delphi excavations), Director of ENS •
François Déroche, orientalist, islamologist, and specialist in
Codicology and
Palaeography Philosophy •
Louis Althusser (1939), Marxist philosopher •
Raymond Aron (1924), political philosopher, founder of French conservative thought post-1960 •
Alain Badiou, philosopher •
Étienne Balibar (1960), philosopher and linguist •
Georges Canguilhem (1924), philosopher of science •
Jean Cavaillès (1923), philosopher and
Résistance hero •
Emile Auguste Chartier "Alain" (1889), philosopher •
Gustave Belot (1878), philosopher •
André Comte-Sponville (1972), philosopher and essayist •
Victor Cousin (1810), spiritualist philosopher and historian of philosophy •
Jacques Derrida (1952), founder of
deconstruction •
Michel Foucault (1946), historian of systems of thought, member of
Collège de France •
Georges Gusdorf (1933), philosopher and historian of ideas •
Jean Hyppolite (1924), founder of Hegelian studies in France •
Vladimir Jankélévitch (1922), philosopher, musicologist •
Quentin Meillassoux, philosopher •
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1926), phenomenologist •
Jacques Rancière (1960), philosopher •
Philippe-Joseph Salazar (1975), rhetorician, member of
College international de philosophie •
Jean-Paul Sartre (1924), philosopher, novelist, playwright, journalist •
Hippolyte Taine (1893) •
Simone Weil (1928), philosopher and mystic
Sociology •
Jean-Michel Berthelot (1966) •
Raymond Boudon (1951) •
Pierre Bourdieu (1951) •
Émile Durkheim (1879), considered the founder of French sociology
Literature •
Paul Bénichou (1927) •
Robert Brasillach, novelist, critic and pro-Nazi collaborationist •
Aimé Césaire (1935), poet and politician •
Marie Darrieussecq (1990), novelist •
Assia Djebar (1955), Algerian novelist and filmmaker •
Jean Giraudoux (1903), playwright •
Julien Gracq (1930), novelist and literary critic •
Sabiha Al Khemir (1982), writer, illustrator and expert in Islamic art •
Édouard Louis (2011), novelist and sociologist •
Paul Nizan (1924) •
Charles Péguy (1894), poet •
Claude Ribbe (1974), historian and novelist •
Romain Rolland (1886), novelist •
Jules Romains (1906), novelist •
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt (1980)
Literary criticism •
Jean-Charles Darmon (1982) •
Gérard Genette (1951) •
Jean-Pierre Richard (1941)
Philology, grammar, linguistics •
Anatole Bailly (1853), hellenist •
Jean Bousquet (1931), hellenist •
Michel Bréal (1852), philologist •
Jérôme Carcopino (1901), specialist of Roman Antiquity •
Jacqueline de Romilly (1933), hellenist, specialist of the history and literature of Ancient Greece •
Antoine Culioli (1944), linguist •
Oswald Ducrot (1949), linguist, specialist of
pragmatics •
Georges Dumézil (1916), philologist, linguist,
caucasianist, specialist of
Proto-Indo-European language and society •
Alexandre François (1992), linguist, specialist of
Oceanic languages •
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1850), specialist of classical and mediaeval history •
Marcel Granet (1904), sinologist •
Pierre Grimal (1933), Latinist •
Claude Hagège (1955), linguist • (1963), linguist, specialist of
pragmatics • , specialist of Armenian and
comparative linguistics of
Indo-European languages •
Gilbert Lazard (1940), linguist, iranologist •
Christiane Marchello-Nizia (1961), specialist of
Old French • (1968), syntactician •
Andrey Zaliznyak (1957), Soviet exchange student, linguist
History •
Marc Bloch (1904), co-founder of the
Annales School •
Lucien Febvre (1899), co-founder of the Annales School •
Henri Hauser (1885), economic historian •
Ernest Lavisse (1862), a founder of Positivist history •
Jacques Le Goff (1945), medievalist •
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (1949), historian •
Neil MacGregor, art historian, Director of the
British Museum •
Paul Mantoux (1894), economic historian •
Jacques Soustelle (1929), ethnologist •
Gilbert Dagron (1953), historian
Economics •
Yves Balasko (1964) •
Esther Duflo (1992) •
Emmanuel Farhi (1997) •
Xavier Gabaix (1991) •
Thomas Piketty (1989) •
Emmanuel Saez (1992) •
Christian Morrisson (1957) • (1962)
Government and public policy •
Léon Blum (1890) (expelled during his third year), first
Socialist Prime Minister of France (1936) •
Pierre Brossolette (1922), politician and resistant •
Laurent Fabius (1966), Prime Minister of France, 1984-1986 •
Édouard Herriot (1891), Prime Minister of France, 1924–1925, 1926 and 1932 •
Jean Jaurès (1878), Socialist leader •
Alain Juppé (1964), Prime Minister of France 1995-1997 •
Bruno Le Maire (1989),
Minister of the Economy, 2017-present;
Minister of Agriculture 2009-2012 •
Benny Lévy (1965), founder of
Gauche prolétarienne •
Paul Painlevé (1883), mathematician; Prime Minister of France in 1917 and 1925 •
Georges Pompidou (1931), Prime Minister of France 1962–1968;
President of France 1969-1974 •
Michel Sapin (1974), Finance Minister 1992–1993; Minister of Civil Servants and State Reforms 2000-2002 •
Pierre Uri, economist and architect of the
European Economic Community •
Laurent Wauquiez (1994), President of
The Republicans, 2017–present;
Minister of Higher Education 2011-2012
Business •
Philippe Camus (1967), Chairman of
Alcatel Lucent •
Isabelle Kocher (1987), CEO of
Engie •
Anne Lauvergeon (1978), former President of
Areva •
Jean-Charles Naouri (1967), CEO of
Groupe Casino == Faculty ==