France4 profiles

France's most famous personalities — a guide

Four published biographies are associated with France, and they reach the country by four different routes. Marie Curie, born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw, Poland, became a French citizen and did her Nobel-winning work in Paris, where she discovered polonium and radium. Leonardo da Vinci moved to France in 1516 at the invitation of King Francis I and died at Amboise in 1519. Lionel Messi played for Paris Saint-Germain after leaving Barcelona in 2021. Rosalind Franklin worked in Paris from 1947 to 1950, where she learned the X-ray diffraction techniques behind her later work on DNA. [V] Four profiles is not a guide to French history, and this page does not pretend it is — it is an honest record of the French-associated biographies published so far, with the exact basis shown under each profile. No single “most famous” French-associated figure is named: a physicist, a Renaissance artist, a footballer and a crystallographer belong to different worlds. Readers looking for the country of Curie's birth can also visit our Poland page, and her field on the scientists page.

Frequently asked questions