* 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 )

French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac sailed up the Detroit River on July 23, 1701.

* 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 )

This lofty disregard for others was not shared by such men as Pierre Flotte and his associates, that `` brilliant group of mediocre men '', as Powicke calls them, who provided the brains for the French embassy that came to Rome under the nominal leadership of the archbishop of Narbonne, the duke of Burgundy, and the count of St.-Pol.

`` Oh, the French are a very curious people '', Pierre had laughed.

The most important French social theorist since Foucault and Lévi-Strauss is Pierre Bourdieu, who trained formally in philosophy and sociology and eventually held the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France.

In 1806, the French chemists Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet isolated a compound in asparagus that was subsequently named asparagine, the first amino acid to be discovered.

* 1930 – Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist ( d. 2002 )

* 1987 – Pierre Boulanger, French actor

* 1910 – Pierre Schaeffer, French composer ( d. 1995 )

* 1934 – Pierre Richard, French actor

* 1868 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium.

** edited by Pierre Chiron, Collection Budé, with French translation, Paris, 2002, ISBN 2-251-00498-X

* 1962 – Pierre Carles, French documentarist

His education was filled with the ideals of the French Enlightenment of the time, and he was fascinated by Pierre Macquer's dictionary of chemistry.

* 1785 – Alexandre Pierre François Boëly, French composer ( d. 1858 )

* 1904 – Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, French politician, 68th Prime Minister of France ( b. 1846 )

* 1929 – Pierre Fatou, French mathematician ( b. 1878 )

A significant contribution to the chemistry of alkaloids in the early years of its development was made by the French researchers Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, who discovered quinine ( 1820 ) and strychnine ( 1818 ).

The French physicist Pierre Victor Auger also discovered it in 1923 upon analysis of a Wilson cloud chamber experiment and it became the central part of his PhD work.

* 1142 – Pierre Abélard, French writer ( b. 1079 )

In 1736, he participated in the expedition organized for that purpose by the French Academy of Sciences, led by the French mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis ( 1698 – 1759 ) to measure a degree of latitude.

Bauxite was named after the village Les Baux in southern France, where it was first recognised as containing aluminium and named by the French geologist Pierre Berthier in 1821.

Another French inventor by the name of Douglas Grasso had a failed prototype of Pierre Lallement's bicycle several years earlier.

In 1794, this fortress was used by the French astronomer Pierre François André Méchain for observations relating to a survey stretching to Dunkirk that provided the official basis of the measurement of a metre.

Bézier curves were widely publicized in 1962 by the French engineer Pierre Bézier, who used them to design automobile bodies.

This measure apparently had no great success, since French voyager Pierre Gilles writes in the middle of 16th century that the Greek population of Constantinople was unable to mention any name of the ancient Byzantine churches transformed in mosques or abandoned.