Pioneering Contributions by France to Science, Entrepreneurship, Literature, and other Walks of Modern Life
J.V. Yakhmi
France has made path-breaking contributions to different aspects of modern life, viz. fashion, arts, perfumery, cosmetics, wine-making, literature, science and technology. We discuss some of them.
Nurturing creativity has been a long-time tradition in France. The great polymath, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who was a painter, inventor, scientist, anatomist, engineer, architect, sculptor, cartographer and designer, spent the last three years of his life in the ‘Château du Clos Luce’ (formerly known as ‘Manoir du Cloux’), at Ambroise, in France, as the “Premier Painter, Engineer and Architect to the King” appointed by King François I of France. Under this, Leonardo earned a princely allowance and had no specific duties. Therefore, he could work, unfettered, on his creative pursuits, including his paintings: Saint Anne, Mona Lisa and Saint John the Baptist, brought by him from Italy.
The French have had a tradition of excellence in several important areas of societal relevance, such as education, industry, rail-transport, communications, etc. Perhaps, no other country preserves its heritage as much as the French do, which becomes apparent even after a single visit to Paris, or to other large cities in France. An important piece of French identity, the French long bread, with a crunchy crust and alveolar interior called ‘baguette’, has been granted the world heritage status by UNESCO on Nov 30, 2022. Specialty yeasts were developed in France to inspire this bread’s long fermentation stage at boulangeries which serve fresh baguette. No wonder, the French say, “250 grams of magic and perfection in our daily lives”, with pride.
Working very diligently, the French people have made important original contributions in fashion, arts, perfumery, cosmetics and wine-making, and not forgetting literature, for which Romain Rolland and Jean-Paul Sartre got Nobel prizes. Those two names might be more familiar to readers, but as many as 16 French authors have won Nobel prizes in literature, ever since its inception in 2001. The latest among them is Annie Ernaux, who won the 2022 Nobel for clinical acuity in her writings, which are mostly autobiographic.
Talking of a long tradition of writing by French authors, who can forget Voltaire (1694–1778), the historian, philosopher and writer on enlightenment? One of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally, Voltaire was versatile and prolific, who wrote 2000 books, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and even scientific expositions. Famous for his wit, and criticism of Christianity, he advocated freedom of speech, religious tolerance, and separation of church from the state.
Several of the French universities, the CNRS and CEA have made their mark historically in the world of science and technology, purely because France has had a culture and temper of science going back to even before the period of the French Revolution. For instance, Lavoisier worked on the rudiments of stoichiometry and combustion nearly 250 years ago.
French scientists have made notable contributions to the fundamental knowledge-base, as it exists now in text-books. This became possible because France has nurtured some great institutions like École Polytechnique (Palaiseau), École Normale Supérieure (Paris) and Collège de France (Paris), all of which are a matter of envy outside France.
Two centuries after his birth, high school students across the world continue to be inspired by Louis Pasteur (b. 1822) because the process of pasteurisation is a part of the curriculum. His innovative studies of fermentation processes and infectious diseases focussed, interestingly, at the boundary between living (Biology) and non-living entities (Chemistry), and were a forerunner of the current trend of interdisciplinary scientific research. After a degree in science, Pasteur had joined the elite École Normale Supérieure in Paris, in 1843, where he also discovered optical isomerism in crystals of tartaric acid in 1844.
Among the famous French scientists who made singular contributions before the introduction of Nobel prizes were the crystallographer Bravais, known for Bravais lattices; Dulong and Petit, for the Law named after them; Carnot, for Carnot cycle and the laws of thermodynamics; the chemists le Chatelier for le Chatelier Principle, and Gay-Lussac for Gas laws; the mathematicians Poisson, Poincaré, Lagrange, and Cauchy; and the Physicists Clapeyron known for Clausius-Clapeyron Principle; Fresnel for the biprism in Optics, and Fabry for the Fabry-Pérot interferometer. The list becomes formidable when we add the names of Leon Brilliouin, Fourier, Langevin and Fink.
Among the French scientists who won Nobel prizes were Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, Henri Becquerel, Gabriel Lippman, Victor Grignard, Paul Sabatier, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Louis de Broglie, Louis Néel, Alfred Kastler, Jean-Marie Lehn, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Claude Cohen Tannoudji, Albert Fert, Jules Hoffmann, Serge Haroche, Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Alain Aspect.
I had an occasion to introduce Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn, the 1987 Chemistry Nobel laureate, to school students in Mumbai in 2016, when he answered their questions in a program that was video-cast live to 30 schools and junior college across India. In this informal chat with students, he not only inspired hundreds of them, but also enthralled them by playing some music for them. He told students that learning science to acquire knowledge is important, but spending time with Art and Music is also useful for growing minds.
With a rich past and present of French science and innovative technologies, entrepreneurship comes naturally to the French, more so because they have an emotional attachment to what they do, and take a sense of pride in it. You can see that in the running of the TGV, or the making of the world-famous champagne and red wine in France.
The champagne made by Taittinger, located in Reims, is cellared in a magnificent 2.5-mile underground network of chalk caves, originally dug by the Romans. It sells 5–6 million bottles, annually. Among the red wines of France, Bourgogne rouge comes from the Pinot Noir grapes grown in France’s easterly Burgundy region. Another red wine, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, comes from vineyards located around the village Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the Rhone region of southeastern France. A popular white wine is Alsatian wine, produced in the Alsace region of France.
During my visits to Bordeaux region, I have marveled at the enthusiasm and care that is given to vineyards, running into kilometers in the countryside, such as at St. Emilion, Libourne, Les Billaux and Quinsac. The importance the French give to the terroir — the harmonic mix of plant, soil, geology, and climate which help the grapes to grow and ripen just at the rate required, and to the rigor of wine-making in their factories (Chateaus) is legendary. What else is Entrepreneurship?
An excellent example of the French entrepreneurship in the digital world is that of the École 42, a private and non-profit teacher-less computer science school in Paris started in 2013 by Xavier Niel, a French billionaire, who has spent Euro 57 million on it to cultivate entrepreneurship in coding talent in France. No fees are charged and the students are trained 24/7, through peer-to-peer, pedagogy, and project-based learning. Curriculum is creativity, critical thinking, communication, logic and motivation. The success of this idea can be gauged from the fact that as of 2022, 42 campuses of École 42 have been opened in 25 countries.
The French scientists and technologists have invented some very useful things and gadgets. For example, the stethoscope was invented by a French physician Rene Laennec in 1816; the pencil sharpener was invented by the French mathematician Bernard Lassimonne in 1828; Braille was invented in 1829 by Louis Braille, a Frenchman who had become blind at a very young age; photolithography was devised by Nicephore Niepce in 1822; the photographic film projector (cinema) was invented by the Lumière Brothers in 1895; the first rechargeable battery based on lead-acid was invented by Gaston Plante in 1859; the neon lamp was made by a French chemist and engineer, Georges Claude in 1910; the medicinal quinine to treat malaria was developed in 1737 by Charles Marie de La Condamine; and acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), the most widely used medicine in the world, was first made by the French chemist Charles Frederic Gerhardt in 1853.
But French people don’t rush to do things. As a scientist, I have been to France several times, and love to spend time in the labs of France. The French work hard when they work, and shut off completely from the workplace and its doings when they are on vacation to relax and replenish their enthusiasm and energies. During holiday time in August, for instance, one doesn’t expect a French friend to reply emails or to interact on a regular basis. Similarly, during the Christmas holidays, we don’t disturb a French colleague, until they return to their workplaces, all charged up to work hard again. Various visitors from other countries often think that the French way of life is relaxed and perhaps the French are not as serious as the slogging Americans, Chinese or Indians. Not true! In support of this I would state that it is not for nothing that over 72 French Nationals have won Nobel Prizes in different disciplines.
