Here follows a list of notable alumni and faculty of the École normale supérieure.
| This article needs additional citations for verification. (September 2010) |
The term used in ENS slang for an alumnus is Archicube.[1]
The year when they entered the ENS is in parentheses.
Fields Medal laureates
The following Fields Medal recipients were educated at the École Normale Supérieure.
Humanities
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
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)
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
- Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni [fr] (1963), linguist, specialist of pragmatics
- Charles de Lamberterie [fr], specialist of Armenian and comparative linguistics of Indo-European languages
- Gilbert Lazard (1940), linguist, iranologist
- Christiane Marchello-Nizia (1961), specialist of Old French
- Alain Rouveret [fr] (1968), syntactician
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
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[2]
- Laurent Wauquiez (1994), President of The Republicans, 2017–present ; Minister of Higher Education 2011-2012