* 1779 – Louis de Freycinet, French explorer ( d. 1842 )

* 1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.

* 1741 – Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, French navy officer and explorer ( d. 1788 )

* Alexandra David-Néel ( 1868 – 1969 ), French explorer and spiritualist

* Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, French explorer, founder of Detroit

However, it was French explorer Jacques Cartier who made the first detailed reconnaissance of the region for a European power, and in so doing, claimed the region for the King of France.

Diego Garcia had no permanent inhabitants when discovered by the Spanish explorer Diego García de Moguer in the 16th century and remained so until settled as a French colony in 1793.

* 1873 – Francis Garnier, French explorer ( b. 1839 )

* 1840 – Henri Duveyrier, French explorer ( d. 1892 )

* 1772 – Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, French explorer ( b. 1724 )

* 1637 – Jacques Marquette, French missionary and explorer ( d. 1675 )

* 1534 – French explorer Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France.

* 1786 – Joseph Nicollet, French mathematician and explorer ( d. 1843 )

* 1740 – Jeanne Baré, French explorer ( d. 1803 )

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (; commonly known in English as Jacques Cousteau ; 11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997 ) was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water.

It is believed that the French explorer Jean Nicolet was the first non-Native American to reach Lake Michigan in 1634 or 1638.

The lake was named for the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who encountered it in 1609.

The French explorer Jacques Marquette contacted the tribe in 1673 and paved the way for trade with the French.

The French explorer Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont visited the people in the early 1720s.

* 1790 – Jules Dumont d ' Urville, French naval officer, admiral, and explorer ( d. 1842 )

* 1878 – Paul Pelliot, French sinologist and explorer ( d. 1945 )

* 1643 – Robert Cavelier de La Salle, French explorer ( d. 1687 )

* 1729 – Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French explorer ( d. 1811 )

In 1789, French nobleman and scientific researcher Antoine Lavoisier discovered the law of conservation of mass and defined an element as a basic substance that could not be further broken down by the methods of chemistry.

* 1748 – Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, French botanist ( d. 1836 )

* 1767 – Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, French military leader and politician ( d. 1794 )

* 1801 – Antoine Augustin Cournot, French mathematician ( d. 1877 )

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution ; 26 August 17438 May 1794 ; ), the " father of modern chemistry ," was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology.

With the French chemists Claude-Louis Berthollet, Antoine Fourcroy and Guyton de Morveau, Lavoisier devised a systematic chemical nomenclature.

* 1720 – Antoine Hamilton, French writer ( b. 1646 )

In 1835 the French Academy sent Antoine on a scientific mission to Brazil, the results being published at a later date ( 1873 ) under the title of Observations relatives à la physique du globe faites au Bresil et en Ethiopie.

However in French it is usually referred to as Chateau d ' Abbadie or Domaine d ' Abbadia, and locally it is not unusual for it to be called le Chateau d ' Antoine d ' Abbadie.

The first of these scientific concepts of acids and bases was provided by the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, circa 1776.

* 1612 – Antoine Arnauld, French theologian, philosopher and mathematician ( d. 1694 )

* 1672 – Antoine Augustine Calmet, French theologian ( d. 1757 )

* 1683 – René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French scientist ( d. 1757 )

French frigate Boudeuse ( 1766 ) | Boudeuse, of Louis Antoine de Bougainville

French scientists such as Antoine Lavoisier worked to replace the archaic units of weights and measures by a coherent scientific system.

* 1648 – Antoine Daniel, French missionary ( b. 1601 )

* 1686 – Antoine de Jussieu, French naturalist ( d. 1758 )

* 1781 – François Antoine Habeneck, French violinist ( d. 1849 )

* 1794 – Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine in Paris, France during the French Revolution.

A few years previously, the French chemist Joseph Proust had proposed the law of definite proportions, which expressed that the elements combined to form compounds in certain well-defined proportions, rather than mixing in just any proportion ; and Antoine Lavoisier proved the law of conservation of mass, which helped out Dalton.

* 1794 – Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror by revolutionists, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme Générale, is tried, convicted, and guillotined all on the same day in Paris.

* 1768 – Étienne Marie Antoine Champion de Nansouty, French commander ( d. 1815 )